Lovely
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast. When someone stumbles into an enchantment hidden deep within a forest, he trades his life for the lives of one of his slaves... 1x2 shounen ai. Other characters included.
1. Chapter 1

**Lovely**

**Chapter One**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**Disclaimer**: All characters (with a few minor exceptions) are not mine. The plot is very much not mine, though it's old enough that it's pretty much open material. Anything recognizable is hereby disclaimed. Please ask before using anything uniquely mine.

This had been betaed by the truly marvelous LadyFrisselle, for which I am forever grateful. Thank-you!

_The tapping at the door fractured the carefully maintained silence. There was a quick scurry of servants hurrying to prepare for whoever might be out there: the butler appeared, and a maidservant to take coats; a strong footman in case it was an undesired guest, two page-boys to open the doors. They all worked around each other with uncanny precision, a perfectly orchestrated dance designed for absolute efficiency._

_After all, appearances must be maintained._

_The only hint of unprofessionalism was when the lord of the manor appeared; while there was no obvious outward reaction there was a sudden atmospheric rush of nearly frantic apprehension bordering on fear. One page swallowed spasmodically, then instantly stilled, hopeful that little slip would go unnoticed. A cold glare from his Master's piercingly inhuman eyes, a glittering, depthless blue, told him his actions had not gone unnoticed. He knew he would be punished later._

_At Lord Yuy's nearly imperceptible nod the wide double doors were strenuously drawn open, well-oiled hinges making no noise. A small form huddled on the steps, looking even more lost and inconsequential in comparison to the grandeur that surrounded her. The footman could feel the lord stiffen in anger beside him._

_The hunched figure drew haltingly nearer. The maid noticed uneasily that she looked both old and young, not pinned down to one age. Her eyes were a clear, watery blue, and she looked sightless, peering through everything around her as if it wasn't there, as if there was some truth only she could see._

_"You have not been sent by the Winner family?" asked the butler; there was ice in his voice, his words more statement than question. The sentence was followed by a wail from the wind; a gust of it wove through the frozen tableau of statues in the front hall._

_"I'm just looking for a night's rest..." began the woman, and the maid felt the hairs at the nape of her neck prickle at the words; the voice was as inhuman as her Lord's eyes, simultaneously malevolent and benevolent at once. There was the hiss and crack of ice giving way underlying the woman's speech; she noticed that no snow had settled on her. Silently she turned and fled, one page-boy following a brief beat later; she would rather face her Lord's anger—no matter what he had done to poor Anya a fortnight ago—than that mysterious woman who had no age and all ages._

_The butler gestured at the footman to find he had left with the second page through the still-open doors, even though it was snowing hard and bitterly cold. There was more ice in the woman's voice than in the surrounding forests._

_There was no response to the question; the silence was left purposefully a minute to long._

_"...a bite of food, then?" asked the woman, and while it should have been a hopeful tone of voice there was no hope in it. Lord Yuy seemed to notice nothing wrong._

_"You are taking up my time. Remove yourself from my premises. I have no need for trash..." he sneered the word, though there was no emotion in his voice, only cold, uncaring calculation. "...and I need to attend to my guest, Lord Chang. Have her removed."_

_There was an imperceptible shift in the atmosphere of the room. The Lord of the castle stiffened, turned; the woman, still an age that couldn't be pinned down, turned to face him. Her eyes were glazed with frozen rage._

_"You would... Turn me away?" she said softly, almost gently. "Even with my child with me?" There was a flurry of snow flakes, and when it cleared she was holding a frail bundle that stirred listlessly, weakly._

_"You are wasting my time," said Lord Yuy again. Was there a note of panic in his voice now, or was it just the rising wind?_

_"I see..." sighed the woman, and she smiled for the first time. "There's nothing for it but to share my curse, now. The rules are very specific." Her eyes had taken on the glisten of a river half-frozen over, after it had swallowed yet another sacrificial victim. "I do not think I would spare you even if I could. For you are something special. Your heart is as frozen as my own... I will take it from you."_

_For the first time since he had been a small child, still unsteady on his feet, Lord Yuy tried to run, only to find his body frozen. He felt his fear and knew he was panicking._

_"First, I give you immortality, and eternal youth. To that I add... Yes. An appearance that fits you. Monster. So much like me..." There was hunger in her eyes now. The butler had run long ago._

_"I give you eternity, and a body stronger, heavier, more endurable and faster than any man could hope to be. I also give you the aloneness you long for; there will be no one to interrupt you now, no one to hinder you with anything less than perfection. I'll leave you the company of your Lord Chang, since it is... So much more important than any wanderer. _

_"I've given you so much... Hardly a curse, just as mine is. Will you think that three hundred years from now, when no one will look at you because of your hideous body, assuming there was anyone who could? And so... I give you a chance to break it. Find someone who will love you unconditionally, no matter how you look, and it will disappear. Maybe that's even worse than the curse, hm? I know how you think, Monster. Infant. Beast-child."_

_Her last words to him were whispered, a lover's caress in her tone. "When you've hardened your heart to keep it from hurting so long that it's festered and died, then I will come for you."_

_After that... there was oblivion. Pain._

Heero always awoke silently, even from his nightmares.

It had been a hundred years since he'd last had that dream. Five times that many years since he'd first been cursed.

He'd had the dream... often, earlier. The first time came when the last of the servants died; they were trapped within the curse, unable to leave the castle grounds, but still aging. He'd had to bury the last one himself.

Now he was alone, except for Chang Wufei, and the people the curse had occasionally delivered to him—though none of them had ever stayed for more than three fourths of a year. The shortest time had been two months. A long, long ways from forever.

It didn't matter to him; he was self-contained. Emotionless. The perfect analytical Lord.

Monster.

Master Erik Ellyaugh had never been a good man, and for the first time he was regretting it. He could almost see his littlest sister, Toriana, looking at him sadly as he crashed through the undergrowth of the malicious forest; it seemed as if it was pulling him backwards, into the waiting arms of his pursuers.

She'd been dead for years, lost in the plague.

And he had survived, to pick the wrong child to try to kidnap.

In the disorganized chaos that became the aftermath of the plague—nearly everyone who had possessed power dead; nearly everyone was dead, for that matter—it had been easy to go into slavery. There were enough unscrupulous people with money to support him, and it was so very easy with all the rootless people wandering around, lost and helpless.

Erik had never been a bad master. He had made sure they were fed, and he never sold to the worst people, but he had to make a living, and the strong survive.

Hell, he had never even really dealt in children, only that one pick-pocket, the one who looked like a girl. The kid had been asking for it, stealing from him.

Until today, when he'd tried to kidnap Quatre Raberba Winner.

He hadn't known! All he had known was that his employer wanted someone with blond hair and blue eyes; hard to find in brown-haired Terre (1), his native city-state, which was surrounded by wilderness on one side and Arae (2) on the other. He'd never have taken the job, except that he'd been told what would happen to his career if he didn't; he believed him, because he knew what had happened to other people who'd managed to...disappoint people like him.

Winner! He'd tried to abduct a Winner! That was suicide; why not just cover himself with raw meat and throw himself to his guard dogs? It would certainly be less painful.

God, the kid had to be the heir. Only male, with all those sisters before him... shit.

The dogs behind him were getting louder.

He tore his way through a dense thicket and the sudden lack of resistance made him trip, nearly fall. The weather had changed... It was spring, a sullen one, true, but still... This clearing looked to be in late fall; the sky over-head was a curdled, troubled gray, the air much colder, the plants all dormant, with a few tattered leaves still clinging to the branches of the trees.

Now he was in a formal garden, with a castle looming out of the surroundings up ahead. It seemed deserted.

As he sat regaining his breath and his nerves the first few flakes of snow began to fall from the steely sky.

He couldn't hear the dogs anymore, he realized.

Erik walked slowly through the gardens he found himself in, dilapidated and winter-worn. Nobody lived in these woods. He suppressed a shiver, and told himself it was the cold.

Almost as if he was dreaming he found himself in front of a set of huge doors, looming above him; he knocked, not knowing what else to do, and they swung open, smoothly and silently, as if invisible servants were orchestrating it. The hallways were deathly quiet, but it felt as if there were conversations buzzing all around him, silently.

A doorway swung open to his right and he obeyed the silent command to enter, still half-dazed and exhausted. He stumbled over a drawn-out chair—had it moved to meet him?—and found himself sitting at a table, set but otherwise bare. Between blink and another he found food on his plate and a steaming cup of tea served to him. Erik purposefully ignored half-remembered stories his mother had told him about people who were trapped by fairies, caught forever, by eating even a mouthful of their food.

He fell into sleep halfway through the meal.

Erik Ellyaugh awoke late and disoriented the next morning, unsure of where he was. As he lay, attempting to work out his surroundings, it all came rushing out. Unnerved, he wondered whether his food had been poisoned or magicked, or if he had just fallen asleep because of a combination of sustenance, warmth and total exhaustion. There was no answer in the room he found himself in.

The room was spacious and opulent; tasteful in its over-decoration, it was meant to impress. While obviously old—it was decorated in a style he had only seen once, in a painting that was two hundred years old, and of a scene even older—it was as well-kept as if it had been made yesterday; none of the hangings, carpets or upholstery were faded, there was no thick coat of dust on the furniture, the wood hadn't darkened with use, the silver hinges on the cabinet showed no patina of age.

He had been left a breakfast tray, still steaming, though he hadn't seen anyone leave or enter the room. He wasn't quite sure it hadn't been there a moment ago...

Erik rose, shrugged on a dressing gown that had been left out and ate, noting he had been switched out of his torn and muddied clothes into luxurious night clothes while he slept. He finished his morning meal quickly, not as hungry as he'd thought he'd been, before going in search of clothes.

He couldn't find his old ones so he dressed himself from the wardrobe that was conveniently nudged open; while all the clothes were of an antiquated design they were well-made of the nicest fabrics he had ever seen: high-quality brocade, silk, velvet and satin. He had trouble figuring out how the many pieces fit together; they were designed for appearance, not practicality, that much was clear. Everything fit him perfectly, as if it had been made for him.

Fully prepared for the day he surveyed his room. Truly lavishly designed, gold and assorted jewels glittered against rich wood, sumptuous cloth and sparkling glass in a low-key manner obviously meant to catch someone's attention.

It was almost as if they were asking... He thought, as he carefully placed a candlestick in his travel bag, which had been conveniently left for him by his bed.

A few minutes and a few expensive (but small) items later he was done, and prepared to leave. The house was... It couldn't be deserted, because of the cooked meals, but it was obviously the retreat of someone who sought privacy. It would be best if he just...left...

He paused on a whim to take the rose that had been left with his breakfast tray, tucking it into a buttonhole as he left the room.

There wasn't a sign of any person at all until he crossed through the doors of the gloomy front hall into the bright sunshine.

"You wouldn't leave without thanking your host, would you?" came a voice to one side of the steps, so deep it seemed to resonate in his bones. There was a subliminal growl to the words.

He turned around; insensitive though he was, even Erik could sense something was utterly wrong.

No sign of his host. Some self-preserving instinct kept him from walking forward. "Th...Thank you for your hospitality; you saved my life. I am eternally grateful..."

His voice trailed off as he lost his nerve completely. There was a brief pause, as momentous and tense as the minute before a judge passes sentence.

"Yes. I can see that in how you have repaid me."

His bag fell from nerveless fingers, clinking as it hit the ground. Erik's breath was coming faster, so quick he was almost hyperventilating.

"You even took the rose." There was a shadow that wasn't his own lying out on the steps, bigger than any human, and grossly malformed. His heart was nearly humming. He couldn't raise his eyes from the sight; he thought he caught a glimpse of darkest brown-black fur for a brief second before it blended back into shadow.

"You have a child in your care?" came the voice, deep as the night.

He shook his head in a frantic yes, unable to find his voice, nearly hysterical.

The shadow drew marginally back. "You will send it to me. I would say it will be safe here, but you obviously don't care. Good." There was a pitiless, bitter humor in his words.

Slave-Master Erik Ellyaugh fled, that awful voice ringing in his ears; when he arrived home he wouldn't even remember mounting the horse that brought him there. There was a deep red rose, so dark that it faded into velvet-black at the center, wrapped into the tack.

He awoke the next morning in his own bed, and wept, ecstatic, for escaping the beast. Then he went, half-dressed, to his slave-pens, feverish, mumbling to himself.

"You." He kicked at the boy to wake him.

Purple eyes looked up at him, one ringed with bruised flesh, both sunken and unhealthy. A sickly, half-manic smiled played on his lips.

"Feed him." He ordered a guard, who obeyed quickly. It was the child's first meal in... quite a while. He wasn't sure exactly how long. The first water he'd had to drink in three days. Erik glanced at the adjoining cell. Good, he hadn't lost the Winner child. He would live through all his encounters from yesterday: the Beast, the Winner guards and his anonymous employer, none would kill him.

He laughed, though it quickly died in his throat. He couldn't contain his mumbling joy any longer, his eyes flicking neurotically at images only he could see in the air.

The guard was ordered to follow him with the boy. He was set on a spelled horse (it would always find its way to the right place) and taken to the woods—though Master Ellyaugh refused to leave his home and most especially to go near the Northeast Forest, where he'd gotten...lost...the day before—and the pick-pocket slave was turned loose.

The water he'd been given had been drugged, and he was unconscious, tied to the horse. There was no chance he'd awaken until it was too late.

Quatre Raberba Winner glanced listlessly up as another guard approached, this one with one eye obscured by a fall of hair. He didn't recognize the man, but there was no reason to: they were all hard, cruel men wearing a generic guard uniform—brown pants and a loose brown tunic—and Ellyaugh's insignia.

At least he was worth enough that nobody would rape him, at least until he was sold. It was a mild comfort.

He jerked to a more aware state as the door was opened and the man stepped in. Quatre pressed himself into the wall, prepared to defend himself as he'd been taught, as heir to the Winner holdings, if need be.

He knew he was at a disadvantage: he was shorter and slighter than the man who had entered, had already suffered a beating since his capture, and he was weak from lack of food, sleep and water. And the man could always call for backup... He was trapped, a caged rat.

The man bowed and Quatre blinked, caught off-guard.

"I've been sent by Lord Winner," he murmured as he bent to unshackle the boy. He finished quickly and let him stretch carefully, working out some of the pain and stiffness his bruises and cuts had caused, while the guard—his father's hire, really, he supposed—opened the window.

"Your name?" whispered Quatre, keeping a careful eye on his surroundings.

"...Trowa Barton," came the response after a barely noticeable pause. Silence fell, briefly.

A sudden noise made them both stifle a jump, and then they were away, over the roof of the warehouse Ellyaugh ran his slave trade in.

The notice of their disappearance made them turn their horses to the Northeast Forest. They would turn at some point, and come out in Arae, the closest city-state. From there they could return to the Winner house.

That was the plan, at least. The horses never stopped though, and they both found themselves asleep, until the echoing sound of hooves on a paved walk made them awake. The two glanced, wide-eyed, at each other; this wasn't where they should be, even though both animals had been spelled. It should have been impossible to end up lost.

The castle they found looming out of the night wasn't found in any part of Terrae, though it was in an ancient Terrae style. It was nothing that would be found in Arae, and even less something that would be found in Maae (3)—not that they could have gotten that far. It was surrounded by gardens, barely illuminated by thin moonlight.

The sudden sleep that had fallen on them only put them more on edge, that and the sudden way they had woken; neither was the type to fall asleep so easily. Both could nearly scent the magic in the air.

The hollow ring of the steps of another approaching horse made both stiffen, on guard; Quatre reached for where his knife had been hidden (though it had been taken by Ellyaugh) while Trowa reached for his.

A vague shape formed in the mist, then resolved into a figure tied to his horse's back; Quatre recognized him by the long brown braid, hanging down and spattered with mud, and the oddly colored violet eyes.

"He's the boy who had the cell next to mine," said Quatre to Trowa, and he dismounted and walked to the boy, trying to figure out how to untie him without dropping him. Trowa followed a minute later, and supported the former slave as the shorter boy untied him. While they worked the boys' eyes flicked between the two, sizing them up.

They finished fairly quickly—though it was no doubt an eternity to the bound boy—and supported him between them as he grew used to his legs again. After a few minutes he reached up and untied the gag they'd placed on him, spitting out the wad of cloth.

"Thanks," he muttered, voice hoarse, as Trowa offered him water. "Do you know where we are?"

"No," said Quatre, puzzled. "We're no place I've ever been... Maybe it was abandoned a long time ago to the forest."

"The gardens are still cared for," pointed out the newcomer. The three of them stood for a long, cold moment, unsure of what to do. One of the horses shifted slightly, the small noise seeming to shake them from a stupor of inaction.

"We should see if anyone's in the castle," said Quatre at last.

"Yeah," added in the new-comer with a nervous grin. "I mean, it can't be worse than freezing to death out here." Trowa snorted slightly in combined amusement and agreement, and they started off towards the building that dominated the grounds.

The walkways meandered, deceptively heading in one direction before veering sharply in another, with gardens preventing anyone from not following the path. Though the three were relatively close to the castle they never reached the front entrance, being shunted off into a labyrinth of precisely clipped hedge, tall enough that none of them could see over the sides. The small noises they made as they walked were silenced by the damp lawn they found themselves walking on, and a chill mist rose from the wet soil, clinging to the boxwoods that surrounded them and whisping around their ankles, shredded by their steps. Everyone's nerves were stretched to snapping, bodies tensed and senses extended as far as they could be.

Eventually they came to the end of the maze, where a figure waited for them. With dark hair pulled severely back and a stern gaze he was both imposing and reassuringly human, looking as if he was from Arae; it was nearly...comforting to be able to match a familiar place to his features.

He nodded sharply, unfazed, at the small group and turned, leading the way, the three of them following him, the pick-pocket chattering quietly about this and that, all inconsequential and meant largely for himself, as they went.

They quickly came to the castle, though not the front door, instead into what seemed to be a side wing, impressive though it was. That such care was taken on a side entrance spoke of vast wealth. Their guide was unnervingly silent and even the still-unnamed former slave grew quiet as they entered the imposing edifice. Their footsteps were both hushed and unnervingly loud; the absolute noiselessness of the hallways they passed through was as unsettling as the silence they had found in the gardens. Even their footsteps were hushed by the thick carpet, plush against the thief's bare feet. His eyes flickered from side to side, taking in the elaborate candelabras that lit it, the fully and carefully drawn drapes, the way the guttering candlelight cast shadows that looked as if they were people, running from one pool of darkness to the next.

Quatre couldn't help but notice how there were no portraits of the lords of the manor placed on the walls, no paintings of the ruling line. Though there were hunting scenes (but never with people... his subconscious whispered) and landscapes with strange hints of...creatures lurking somewhere just out of view, there were never any humans. There were tapestries of unicorns fleeing hunting dogs, but never any hunters, any maidens to lure the creatures out; there were small statues of satyrs, fair folk, chimeras, but never any of people, and no mirrors.

Trowa observed the other three people silently, watching the slave's unease and Lord Quatre's preoccupation. He watched the stiff walk of their guide and his rigid posture, wondering where they were going, but he followed the wordless, strict commandments laid down by the nearly sacred silence and kept his peace. There was little he could do about it, either way; this was the only shelter for many miles, and more snow was coming—he wouldn't be surprised if it was falling by now. He was unprepared to travel in these conditions, his already weakened charge even less so. No, there would be no other port in this storm.

Wufei was surprised, and hiding it; there should only be one person, not three. Maybe the curse was starting to fail... It had been five centuries, now, approximately. Too long. Even the most powerful magic would begin to run down, and this one had outlived its lifetime many times over, though it was the most powerful curse he had ever heard of, and curses are the hardest magic to work.

Every so often he wondered what the woman who had cursed him along with Heero had been. What sort of creature, human or other? Spirit, sorceress, sprite? She had spoken of her own curse; who had been its cause? What had caused her depthless hate?

He knew he'd never know, and he had stopped caring that he wouldn't long ago, but somehow he had trouble relinquishing the question itself.

The hallway came to an end in a small chamber, with three doors leading out of it, each marked with a name and an engraved rose: Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell and Quatre Winner. He gave a small start of surprise at the familiar surname of the last. It was ironic; the Winners had finally arrived. If he were a less fair man he could have blamed this whole...mess on their family. It had been impatience at their lateness that had made Yuy present himself at the door.

He spoke for the first time. "These are your rooms. You are all free to explore the castle at will, assuming you do not enter any place that is locked. Breakfast will be served when you awaken, mid-meal at one in the afternoon and dinner at eight. Dinner will be served in the lesser dining hall, other meals in your rooms; the doors will show you the way. If you desire anything, look for me—my name is Chang Wufei— or request it of your rooms. Do not pry." He finished his short speech, looked the three critically over once more, than left.

"You're Duo, then?" asked Quatre kindly, looking at the boy. He was splattered with mud, too thin, exhausted and heavily bruised, and the Maaean got the feeling that this was not his normal temperament.

The boy swayed slightly as he stood, unresponsive, exhausted by a combination of stress, malnutrition and the drugs still in his system. He finally nodded as Quatre gazed at him concernedly, Trowa impassively, then turned, fumbled with his door-knob and stumbled into his room.

"Good night," said Quatre to Trowa before entering his own room, exhausted as well. Trowa nodded in reply, and entered his own.

Trowa alone would lay awake for a long while, questioning how they had known their names far enough in advance to have them engraved.

Wufei had one last duty before he went to his own rooms, even though the moon was already setting; dawn was only a few hours away.

He tapped quietly on the door and waited a respectful distance away until the door swung open and the Lord of the castle came out. Silently the two started walking, heading towards the gardens on a walk that had a familiarity born of repetition.

"What are your thoughts?" came the curt question after a few silent moments, the deep voice quiet enough that it was felt as much as heard.

"There are three this time. The spell must be unraveling."

"Only the one with the braid has to follow the spell's specifications. The other two were allowed in on accident, I believe."

"Maybe... There won't be too many more years before this is over." Over the decades Wufei had found he couldn't keep from hoping.

There was a deep growl from the shadows to his left.

"The woman must be long gone by now, especially if the curse is disintegrating."

This time there was no response, though a narrow strip of moonlight shone off of thick fur and glinted on blue eyes for a brief moment. Wufei was long used to his companion's appearance, but that fact didn't sway his friend's (though it was in an odd sense that he used the term 'friend'; he supposed it was better than any other) self-consciousness. He suspected that the servants' reactions—disgust, fear, horror, shock—had had more of an effect than he had ever admitted, even to himself.

Wufei had found himself hoping that Heero would find someone to love him not only because then he himself would be released, but because he truly deserved something better than this constant guilt and disgust, all directed at himself. It was more than any person should ever have to have.

Maybe this time would be the time that released them all from their curse.

(1) Terrae: A city-state of the as-yet-unnamed world I'm writing. Mentally, it's probably best if you equate it with a vaguely English country... Only much smaller. Trowa, Heero and Duo are all Terraen.

(2) Arae: Another city-state, though this one is more a conglomeration of Asian countries... Wufei's a lord of this one.

(3) Maae: Catching on yet? Same as the previous two, with the Middle East. Quatre's family's from there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Lovely**

**Chapter Two**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**A/N:** Second chapter out! Again, I seem to have lost my beta, so would love it if someone else would volunteer! This is one of the stories I do want a beta for, you see...

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of Beauty and the Beast's multiple incarnations; any other bits and pieces of mythology that may appear are not mine as well. Please be aware of the fact that I am messing around with the mythology quite a bit; there's a fair chance that anything that appears has been twisted around.

This has been betaed by the truly wonderful LadyFriselle. Many, many thanks to her! (I probably owe her my firstborn, now…)

Duo stumbled into his room, exhausted to a point where he was past thought. Life had really done a number on him this time; the drugs, malnutrition, bruising, the long ride, mild dehydration... It had all added up to just too much. What was left of his own magical ability wasn't powerful enough to heal anything, even paper-cuts, let alone make up for the damage his system had suffered while under the 'care' of Ellyaugh.

In fact, keeping him inches from death had been a form of insurance against the magic his violet eyes alluded too. Ironic. Painfully so.

His last thoughts were bitter as he fell into an oblivious sleep. The silence was still heavy around him, his rooms holding the same liquid silence as the rest of the castle, heavy and oppressive, though Duo was in no position to realize that. A slight breeze circulated through the room, weaving through curtains and around furnishings. If anyone had been awake in the room they would have noticed that, outside the castle, while the gardens still looked as if they were deep asleep for the advent of winter, the air was much warmer, and the source of the breeze was a window cracked open to let in the cool night. Moonlight dripped in as well, splattering over the floor and walls, turning the intricate decorations into something beautiful.

Quatre couldn't help but feel over-whelmed as he undressed and lay down in the soft bed he'd been provided with. He was tired, both from his short stint as a slave and from the events of the day; he was beginning to realize both that he was caught up in a spell (or curse... his mind whispered) and the huge scale of that magic; it was a frightening thought. His family was from Maae; they kept no slaves (Maaeans were much more civilized than Terraens, in general) and viewed magic as the work of demons: horrible, a blight, sure to bring disaster to anyone who enlisted its help. Anyone with power was killed, to cleanse the family.

He was the only one who knew of his own powers, for two reasons. If he was found out he would be poisoned, then his body burned and his ashes scattered, denied an honorable burial in the ground he had come from. The shame to his family would be inconceivable; imagine, the Winner family heir found to be tainted! Left with only girls to continue care of their lands... Shameful. He was incredibly lucky he was one of the very few born with power that didn't reflect in their eyes the way Duo's did.

He supposed Duo was lucky that he wasn't as prejudiced to magic as most Maaeans were. If he hadn't known better from personal experience, he knew that there was a chance that he would have killed the boy, as honor demanded.

No culture's ideals were perfect, though they all thought they were.

He just had time to notice, sleepily, the open window and wonder at the soft warmth of the night air before he fell asleep. He didn't notice the single burning candle left to illuminate the room extinguish itself, without the help of any night breezes at all.

Though Trowa was tired he couldn't sleep. He could pretend it, as he was doing now, a habit born of long years in dangerous jobs, but he couldn't actually rest. He had never been around such a blatantly powerful magic; most tended to be small, subtle things, charms to distract a too-curious guard or prevent fire; Lords and Ladies, or at least the rich ones, could afford to hire magic-workers to make showy, low-power displays to impress their peers, but never anything intricate, complex, lasting or functional.

Magic like this was from another time; most magic-users had died in the plague, before the healers figured out how to combat it. Only those with an innate healing ability had had a good chance of survival. The plague, and the fires that followed it, when buildings were burned along with the dead, both accidentally and purposefully, had cost an untold amount of knowledge in all fields, magical included.

But somehow they had stumbled into a castle apparently cut off from the rest of the world. Trowa certainly hadn't heard about it before, and he heard about nearly everything eventually. The weather was different here, and magicking the weather took so much power it was only talked about as a legend. And weather was only the beginning—the season itself was different, the apparent age of everything; dust hadn't settled inside the house as it should have, and he had seen no servants, no trace of them. Somehow, whatever it was that they were wrapped up in had known their names when none of them had said anything, then engraved them on their doors.

Had someone here—or the magic itself—known they were coming?

Wufei hadn't wanted to sleep, but he had made himself. He would be doing no one any favors if he didn't manage the few hours' rest he still had left. Over the years he had gotten very good at controlling his body; there was little else to do in the castle. For years he had had to be continually alert as the servants' numbers had slowly dwindled and, with it, their sanity. There had been more than one person who had lost all their minds in the cruel, illusive and implacable web the spell had woven.

During his life, before he had been caught within the castle, he had been called many things: cruel, inhuman, fair, impersonal, controlled, and he was all those things and more. He had been everything a good lord should be, analytical and removed; he had lacked all human values: love, dreams and joy, but also hate, anger, rage, sorrow... In his mind it had been a fair trade. The only choice he could make for his position and his people.

Still, after so many years, he couldn't help but hope. For while he was past Lord and one-time Heir of his ancestral lands, raised since before the cradle to be everything a ruler should be, he was, after all that, human.

He knew that Heero was as human as he was. He wished that someone would realize that, and it wasn't just for his own good that he wished...

Something paced, restless and barely controlled, moving deep within the castle. The slight amount of moonlight that had snuck its way past the heavy curtains covering the windows illuminated the room, silvering dark fur and shining on claws, the fury of helplessness filling the figure, spilling over, leaving him with no way to vent and too much emotion for even his iron control.

It was well past noon and edging into evening when Duo awoke, much clearer-headed. He stretched, luxuriating in a bed and blankets, exponentially nicer than anything he had ever had as a slave, and even before that, as a pick-pocket on the streets.

The events of the past few days snapped back to him and he shot up out of the warm cocoon of blankets, bathed in sunlight from the half-curtained window—no doubt the light was what had woken him—glancing wildly around in a half-dazed attempt to determine his surroundings.

He found himself in a room just breathing age and respectability. A thick rug covered a cold stone floor; hangings obscured the stone walls along with paintings, all landscapes, hunting scenes and still lifes—no people and only fleeing animals were pictured. Several doors apparently led into other rooms; from the night before he half-remembered that this was the second room of the set, with an anteroom the one directly off of the hallway.

The room was terribly tasteful, done in shades of cream, beige and honey-brown with tasteful gold accents; everything was matched, from the desk to the bed-linens to the curtains to the set of combs and hair-brushes set on the—and here he paused with some alarm—vanity, clearly meant for a girl. Though, he reflected, he would use the brushes anyways; it had been a long time since his hair had been brushed.

That train of thought led him to notice that, for a slave, he was wearing remarkably nice clothes, even though they were sleeping garments in what looked to be an archaic style. Nicely made clothes by any standards, actually, and certainly not what he had fallen asleep in. He noted with relief that they were clearly not meant for a girl.

Duo, following the natural thought patterns of the very sleepy, realized with some alarm and a considerable amount of embarrassment that someone had to have undressed and then redressed him; he felt a fierce blush bloom on his cheeks. At least they definitely knew he was male, then.

Forcefully putting the matter aside for a minute, he noticed that there was tray of food steaming gently next to him on the table. Made up of toast, tea, fruit and a delicately cooked egg dish of some sort, it was a large amount of food for anyone, and a ridiculous amount for a three-quarters-starved (and slight!) slave.

Duo was, admittedly, a teenage boy, a group known worlds over and for time out of mind for their large appetites; however, he had never had access to large amounts of food on a regular basis, being a pick-pocket and thief during a time of plague (and therefore famine) and then a slave who was kept under control by starvation.

He managed only a few small bites of each dish before feeling nearly uncomfortably full. (1) Everything was delicious, leaving him disappointed he couldn't eat more, but he relished the tea most of all. It felt as if every inch of his body was desperately thirsty, calling out for water. While he had been given some just the day before, it had been drugged, further depleting him of much-needed moisture. His body had never reacted well to medicines, harmful or not, a lingering reminder of the magical ability he had lost.

_It's funny_, he thought mirthlessly, _that someone who had magic destroy their life would be pulled into such a huge spell_.

He finally found the energy and force of will to drag himself from his bed. Poking through the various cabinets, chests, wardrobes and bureaus eventually led him to finding clothes he would be willing to wear, though it took a while, and a fair bit of muttering to himself.

"...clothes, clothes, something without lace, clothes that I can wear, something comfortable, please... Aha!"

After finally finding and pulling out a pair of pants and a simple shirt he walked out of his rooms and into the deserted hallway. There were two doors to either side, each marked with a name; the one labeled Quatre Winner had been left open, and the quiet murmur of two voices could be heard within it.

"Hello?" he called into the room, rapping on the door.

There was a brief pause, the voices halting, before he could hear footsteps. Their sources were quickly revealed to be the two people he had met the night before—Trowa and Quatre, he thought their names had been.

"Hello!" Exclaimed the shorter blond one, his voice soft and gentle. The other person, taller and with one (presumably) green eye obscured with a fall of hair, simply nodded.

"Hey!" greeted Duo cheerily. "Quatre and Trowa, right? Any idea what's going on?"

"No, I'm afraid not—your name is Duo, yes?" At the braided boy's affirmative nod, Quatre continued. "Are you feeling better now? You didn't look very good last night..."

"Much. It's amazing what a good night's sleep, food, water and, oh, getting the drugs out of your system will do for someone."

Trowa only nodded slightly in greeting.

Duo and Quatre chit-chatted for a few minutes, Trowa watching impassively until Duo broke off.

"…And damn but you're quiet, Trowa."

"No point in saying nothing."

"Well, whatever floats your boat. Anyone seen anybody other than one of us three since we saw Wuffie last night?"

"Wufei," came the cold response from behind. Duo's eyes widened comically as he spun around. In reality he had known that he was there already—one doesn't pick-pocket for years (and quite successfully, he had to say) without picking up a few things—but it was always best to keep at least something to yourself.

"Hello! Hey, mind telling us what's going on here? And sorry about the name—It's just; Wufei doesn't seem to suit you too well."

Wufei was unamused. Why couldn't it have been the sweet-tempered blond boy or the tall and quiet one who had been chosen by the spell? As things were, this...peasant was one of the most infuriating people he'd ever met. Not to mention one of the most ill-suited to Heero's personality. He tried to suppress the rush of bitter disappointment—there was still at least a chance that this Duo would be the one to fulfill the prerequisites set out by the curse. Maybe.

"Yes. I owe you all an explanation, at least." He turned, face stern and back stiff (only someone who knew him well would recognize that he was annoyed beyond his normal levels,) automatically assuming that the three new-comers would follow along behind him.

Duo and Quatre exchanged glances, the former giving an expressive shrug, Trowa watching both of them blankly. They seemed to reach a consensus, no one actually needing to say anything, turning and following after the Araean boy, hurrying to catch up with his quick stride.

They quickly came out of the castle, moving out into the thin sunshine of a high-walled courtyard. The gardens were sober and severe in their arrangement, designed to be admired, not enjoyed. The orange-copper flicker of fish in the formal pool was the only hint of color, even though the weather seemed to be appropriate for mid spring; by all rights, the ground should have been a riot of color.

"Sit," ground out Wufei, already annoyed by the near-ceaseless movement of that braided creature, as he had taken to calling him. He added a "please" as an afterthought.

"I would guess that you have already figured out at least some of this by yourself, but—" he paused, his eyes flicking to Duo, "—there's always the chance I've overestimated one of you."

Duo was almost as annoyed by Wufei as he was by him; only the knowledge that his apparent oblivion bothered Wufei more than anything else kept him from responding directly to the constant challenges and barbs.

Quatre was developing a headache from all the tension in the air. Trowa's constant silent observation wasn't helping the situation.

"Nearly five hundred years ago a curse was placed on this castle. There was a...mistake made, and a powerful being was offended. She gave the lord of the castle at that time, Heero Yuy, the shape of a...beast, and bound both him and I into the spell, so that neither of us would age or die until the terms of the spell were fulfilled.

"She said that only when someone agreed to love Heero as he was, with his new form, would we be released. Until then we would live alone in this castle, attended only by the 'ghosts of the castle,' the memories of people who used to live here."

The three new-comers were all getting a bad feeling about what was coming next. They could all begin to guess, at least, how this would end up turning out.

"Our chance to fulfill the terms of the curse would come every so often when someone of the proper age would be brought here, or be made to come here by someone else who had found their way. That person would be required only to eat dinner every evening with Lord Heero; they had no obligations. At the end of that time, no longer than nine months, if the spell still isn't satisfied, then that person is free to leave, they are paid well for their time and left unharmed."

Wufei saw Quatre open his mouth, about to ask a question, and cut him off. "Before you bother asking, only Duo is bound by the terms of the curse. As far as we—as far as Lord Heero—knows, you two, Trowa and Quatre, were brought in with him on accident."

"Oh," said Duo simply, eyes huge.

"Is there any way that I could return?" asked Quatre, looking remarkably shuttered for someone so generally open. "My family..."

Trowa's one visible eye had narrowed, upset by the facts: he was out of his league, trapped without magic or any obvious assets other than experience, the only person responsible for his charge, the Winner heir, trapped for an indefinite amount of time with no way to even send a message to the outside world.

All Wufei could do was hope that Duo would take it this well when he actually saw Heero. The first meeting hadn't gone well even once over the 500 years this had been happening.

At least Heero has had practice at being less immediately threatening, he thought, amused. The long and the short of it was that Heero was both physically and mentally incapable of being non-intimidating, but, on a more serious note, he had learned at least a little about ways to not approach someone. Following the girl (or boy) around in the near-dark until she noticed him behind her had been one of the more graphic mistakes...

Even the amusement in the memory couldn't overwhelm the darker side of things. Having everyone who met you scream, or faint, or panic, or run, or any combination, had to hurt, no matter how often the lord of the castle denied it. It was a lot of year's worth of reminders that he was a...monster.

Turning, he judged that Duo had worked his way through the shock enough for now. "Dress nicely for dinner; be ready by eight, and wait for me to come get you. You two may do whatever you please; your meal will be served in the hall at the end of the corridor your rooms are along, but you are free to take your food wherever you desire to actually eat it.

"For the rest of the day, do whatever you choose. There is a library if anyone is interested, and any of the rooms you can find are open. If there is a room or corridor you persistently try to open and can't, it is forbidden; let it rest. You are free to go anywhere outdoors, though none of us are capable of entering the forest. It's part of the curse. That is all."

"Uh..." managed Duo, looking dazed."What time's dinner again? Why can't I eat with Trowa and Quat?"

Quatre startled slightly at his new nickname; Trowa merely looked bemused.

"Dinner is at eight and the reason you can't eat with the two tolerable people here is because you are eating with Heero, the lord of the castle." Wufei's temper was completely shot; he didn't know whether he was just out of practice at keeping it (it had been a long time since he'd dealt with other people) or the fact that Duo had reached levels of annoying the rest of the world could only imagine.

Oh well—at least he could rest easy with the knowledge that Heero would not be nearly as tolerant as he was, and a lot more capable of ripping him into apple-sized chunks and then feeding him to the horses.

That actually wasn't a half-bad idea. It would be proof there was justice in the world, certainly.

Wufei didn't even bother hiding his vindictive smirk. Duo was still too shocked to notice it, anyways.

"You do know I'm a guy, right?"

It was later in the afternoon and the four boys had remained in the courtyard—Duo and Quatre because they had nothing else to do, Trowa because he was watching Quatre, and Wufei only because he owed it to Heero; he had given his word that he'd make sure the boy was...as prepared as he could be to meet him.

"I mean, the hair can sometimes throw people off, but I don't have any... girly bits. Um. And I do have guy bits. And that could get a bit awkward. I mean, I don't really look all that girly, but it's happened before..."

Wufei sighed heavily. This was always one of the more...difficult parts of the conversation.

"Our first male... Visitor, for lack of a better word, was 150 years ago. We have had a mix of both genders from that time on. Heero is—" and Wufei was very glad the Lord wasn't here at the moment "—Heero doesn't seem to—care either way. Things have changed a lot over the years."

Trowa could see that Quatre was slightly shocked by this admission, frowning slightly. As a member of the nobility, it wasn't something that was liable to be talked about around him. It certainly wasn't accepted. Wufei looked approximately the same, uncomfortable with the subject and vaguely disproving, probably from generations of past lords with very strict ideas of what was proper, and love between men had never been a borderline subject.

He himself was fine with it; you met a lot of interesting people in his line of work. _All_ kinds of interesting, and all degrees.

And Duo? Over the course of the afternoon he had quickly realized that it was hard to tell what Duo was thinking. Or rather, you could generally figure out something that Duo was talking about, but not any more than that. The (ex) slave had multiple trains of thought going at once, all completely unrelated, and only the harmless, non-useful information made it past his censors—though that, at least, generally showed up clear as day.

Trowa was almost certain that his strange relationship with reality and touch-and-go personality were an act designed to make people under-estimate him.

But then again, he thought as Duo's final rambling comment on being male and not female sent Wufei plunging over another edge, maybe not. If it is, it's a damn good act.

"Oh. Well then." said Quatre finally, causing Duo and Wufei to break off their swiftly-escalating argument. "You don't mind, Duo, do you?"

Duo blinked. "I hadn't actually thought about it much. I mean, haven't had much time or reason too. I've been with that bastard Ellyaugh the past two or three years, plague mostly before that... Hm. I dunno."

In the short silence that followed Duo imagined that he could actually hear Wufei's teeth grinding. "Tell you what, 'Fei-fei, I'll think about it and get back to you. You're not that bad looking yourself." He flashed him a grin and winked for added affect.

The strangled noise that greeted him was entirely worth it.

The sun was still lingering in the sky, still above the horizon, though just barely; it's reddish-tinted light lending Duo's room a strange, other-worldly feeling, as if the light itself had somehow been permeated with blood.

That was a bit melodramatic, thought Duo. Hardly proper thoughts before going to dinner. Roses--that suited much better. Rose sunset light. Still mushy and over-done, but much nicer, over-all, than blood.

He fidgeted subconsciously with a button-hole, dropping the fold of black cloth quickly once he noticed what he was doing. His clothes were stiff and uncomfortable, designed directly for style rather than use, and they had managed entirely new levels of impracticality. Fashion seemed to have changed over the past 500 years—he had never seen anyone wear anything even remotely similar to what his wardrobe (that had been a weird incident) had provided. True, recent fashions for those with money were stupid as well, but times had gotten a lot more difficult with the onset of the plague.

His mind was (thankfully) forced off of that subject with a sudden knock at his door before it was opened, revealing Wufei, looking regal and foreboding in the now-golden light.

He eyed Duo critically, forcing himself to admit that he cleaned up well. Except for the hair, which was obscenely long, and still braided.

Speaking of which… "Can't you do something about your hair?"

"No," said Duo flatly, voice filled with determination and deep-rooted stubbornness, a dangerous look in his eyes; he was prepared to defend the point, if necessary. Wufei didn't try to press the matter.

"You will be expected to behave yourself at least decently while at dinner; it's a matter of respect. I know you're probably not used to these sorts of situations, but please just… do your best."

Duo had to admit, he was a bit surprised. Not about the hair—that particular point was so obviously going to come up that it wasn't even worth thinking about—but that there was a note of… worry in Wufei's voice?

"Try to be tactful at least. Heero—I told you the curse changed him. He looks… very much not human. Take this as a warning. I can't say any more than that, I'm afraid I'd prejudice your own opinions, but please…Think before you act."

Wufei's face grew even more severe. "If you end up hurting him, surviving long enough to get out of here will be the least of your worries."

Duo could tell a warning when he heard one. He also guessed that this wasn't the time to do what he liked to term "lightening the mood" but which was, in reality, better named "pissing people off."

"It's time, then," Wufei said, walking to the door and waiting a minute, looking over his shoulder to double-check that the other boy was following behind him. They walked down through a set of oppressively dark hallways, taking multiple turns as they navigated the complicated warren that was the castle.

They eventually came to the second-most impressive set of doors Duo had ever seen, dwarfed only by the castle doors themselves; the dark wood was finely carved with an intricate design; Duo couldn't quite make it out in the half-light.

Wufei turned to his increasingly nervous companion and bowed slightly, punctuating the earlier conversation with another impressive glare before turning and leaving. The doors swung open nearly silently, the only noises a slight grinding from the hinges and its whisper as it was pulled over the empty carpet.

Duo swallowed slightly, impressed (and slightly intimidated) in spite of himself, before walking in.

The room was heavily shadowed, with only a banked fire and the slight flicker of candles to light up the room. The ceiling soared upwards for an impressive distance, the dim lighting adding to the illusion that it went on forever. A long table stretched away as well, with two place settings clustered at the near end with a set of steaming dishes.

The room was also empty. It was a bit of a let-down, actually.

Duo stood fidgeting for a few minutes, unsure of what to do, before the creak of the doors opening made him jerk around.

The figure standing in the doorway was, as Wufei had said, definitely not human-looking, even half-obscured by shadow as it was now.

It was too tall, for one, and built wrong, and covered in shaggy fur; the head was too heavy and the wrong, the jaw belonged to a predator. The eyes were invisible, sunk in shadows and covered by hair, a particularly disturbing effect. He could still see that they were arranged in the wrong position, made for hunting instead of escaping.

Even through the fur he could see the muscle covering him, rippling with his movements, and the motions themselves were barely controlled, as if the energy harnessing them was seeking to escape. There was a terrible air of power around him.

Duo covered his fear by bowing slightly. The cold, calculating part of his mind was whispering about not showing fear, potential escape and how totally under-matched he was if it came to a fight. The more human part of his mind was cowering in abject fear, whimpering to itself. The end result of the mis-matched suggestions ended up putting him down a very Duo path: wing it and do your best to act as if nothing's wrong. Wait for cues from his... dinner companion. Who just happened to have his eventual freedom based on whether or not Duo would love him.

He gulped slightly, and the slight flicker of motion caught Heero's attention. He waited, heart cold, for the panic that would surely follow.

"Hey there, I'm Duo, and I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're Heero. Mind if we eat? I'm starving!"

(1) When you don't eat for long periods of time your stomach shrinks, so you feel fuller faster. It's not that he's not hungry, or doesn't need the nutrients, it's that he can't physically fit much more food into his body without being violently ill, definitely not what he needs, health-wise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Lovely**

**Chapter Three**

**By Dreaming of Everything**

**A/N:** I'm not particularly fond of this chapter. It was being bad. Oh well…

I'm experimenting with new page breaks, as QuickEdit has started eating my old ones. Bleah.

Many, many thanks to LadyFrisselle for betaing!

OoOoOoOoOoO

"Hey there, I'm Duo, and I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're Heero. Mind if we eat? I'm starving!"

In five hundred years, nobody had ever responded to him that way. There was no fear, though there had been just seconds earlier; there was no hate, no disgust, no revulsion, no panic. He had to be crazy or, or...

Really, the only explanation Heero _could_ come up with was insanity.

Duo looked blankly at his poleaxed dinner companion. He really _was _hungry, and it wouldn't be polite to eat until his host sat down, at least.

"...It is good to meet you," said Heero finally, falling back to formality, voice so deep it was nearly subterranean, humming through Duo's bones, a nearly physical force. Some vague part of Duo's mind noted it was probably a side-effect of the inhuman build the creature had.

Heero finally moved, as enigmatic as he had always been, to the seat obviously meant for him, considerably larger than the other one, and meant for his taller, heavier frame. His old body had been short and lightly built, but the curse had promised him _a body stronger, heavier, more endurable and faster than any man could hope to be_ and whatever else happened, the sorceress who had cast it had been true to her word. That particular promise had been fulfilled, and then some. So had the others.

Duo took his own seat gracefully, blinking at his already-served plate. While Wufei had explained about the invisible servants, the echoes of the souls who had once lived in the castle, it took some getting used to. At least he wasn't the skittish type…As this scene was so effectively demonstrating. Inside he was a little puddle of fear, but he was functioning fine beyond that. It helped that he was hungry--it gave him something to focus on.

As he ate he was intensely aware of both the silence and the penetrating gaze. Oh well--he could remedy _one _of those, at least.

His dinner partner didn't seem to be the talkative type; in that case, it was up to him. It was a good thing he was a master at inane babbling... "Wufei spent the day showing me, Quatre and Trowa around. Took us through some of the house--this place is ridiculously large, just for the record--and around most of the grounds. Didn't quite make it all the way through. We've still got the rose garden and informal gardens, apparently. I dunno, though, it's the wrong time of year for roses... Now that I think of it, that bastard Ellyaugh kept on muttering about roses. He seemed even crazier than usual, which takes some doing in reference to a guy who tried to kidnap a Winner. I mean, that's got 'repressed suicidal urges' stamped all over it, really."

Heero glared slightly at his dinner companion. Did he have any idea what he was caught up in? What he was facing? This wasn't...Wasn't anything _normal_. Heero wished he would stop talking about the roses.

Duo caught the look aimed in his direction--it would be hard not to even if his attention _wasn't_ focused on the creatu--_person _across from him. As things were, his mind was still screaming "Threat! _Threat_!" as loudly as it could.

Seeing as drawing Heero into conversation most definitely wasn't working, Duo redirected his flow of words towards himself. "…Anyways. Nice to be out of Ellyaugh's hands. I just can't believe he took advantage of the plague like that, especially since it took his family as well--Well, I mean, I _can_ believe it, hard not to, but I just can't imagine what sort of person it would take to do that. Other than Ellyaugh, I mean."

"Plague?" said Heero finally. They--Wufei and himself--had no way of learning what was happening in the world outside of their own except through news brought in through their "visitors."

Duo had swung around sharply at Heero's sudden words to look him full in the face, (_So he wasn't crazy_, thought Heero. _Just good at hiding his fear..._) but as his mind processed what Heero had actually said he froze, face moving to blankness for the first time since his arrival, smoothing out to something as immobile as marble for one quick split second before Duo began to move again, straightening up out of a barely-noticeable hunched position, his grin returning. All in all, the brief moment of change was nearly unnoticeable, and all the more extraordinary (Heero refused to think 'vaguely unnerving' just on principal) because of that.

"The plague? I guess it makes some sort of sense that you wouldn't've heard of it... Still. It started seven years ago, with a single case in a small town. People think it came out of a near-by swamp. People from the neighboring village went to see what had happened after nobody showed up for their weekly market and found everyone dead. I think three people out of the whole village survived.

"The people from the second village carried it with them, and then messengers left there to inform the King's City what had happened, taking the plague with them as well--soon it was everywhere. It raged for two years--only the richest families had a good chance of survival. Healers couldn't save anybody unless they died in the attempt, which many chose to do--there are almost none left anymore because of that.

"The plague was unique in that it was worse for people with power, and innate magic wasn't enough to drive off the disease unless you were a healer. There are even less general magic-workers than healers now.

"In the long run, it tore apart all the structure society had. There's no order, no organization anymore. It's what allows Ellyaugh to run his slave trade--now all that matters is if you have enough money. Laws and rules are largely inconsequential. Most people have lost their families, which leaves you weaker in the long run, having nobody to watch your back, so many have joined what are essentially gangs that act like extended family groups. It keeps people safer, emotionally and physically.

"Only people with large amounts of power and wealth really survived intact, and even then they needed to change how things work for them to keep themselves that way.

"The plague really changed everything, I guess."

Heero nodded once, still analyzing the new information he had been given.

"Now it's my turn for a question!" enthused Duo. "Soooooo--! Tell me about this curse-thing. I'm curious; why were _you_ cursed? Who by? How the hells did it last so long? When--Well, you get the point."

Heero stilled, Duo noticed, and barely suppressed an ironic, bitter smirk. _We seem to be treading on all sorts of metaphorical toes today..._ He thought.

"I... Was the one cursed because of a...

"Actually, it is none of your business. I owe you nothing.

"Please do not speak of this again."

Duo nodded his understanding, knowing he had the same reaction to some questions as well. It could be a personal question, depending on the situation, and Duo _certainly_ never answered those, at least not with complete truth, and not to the people who mattered. Not that there had been any, those past few years as a slave.

He had finished eating, he noticed, and decided it was time to leave. The atmosphere had grown irrepressibly awkward, and he didn't want to deal with any more of it. He was still feeling bad, anyways, weak and nearly dizzy from the continued effects of his imprisonment. "Well, that's that, I guess, and I'm going to be heading back to my room if it's all the same to you, I'm still a bit on the tired side and all."

"Wait. Before you go--I'm required to say this. It is one of the conditions of the curse. I do not think I will ever love anyone. It certainly has nothing to do with you.

"Will you marry me?"

"Uh?"

"Answer however you will. It is of no importance to me."

"Uh, sorry but no." Duo's body stilled instead of moving back before he managed a quick "Goodbye!" and dashed off to his room. It was a relief that there were no sounds of pursuit, though he knew that he wouldn't hear the beast even if he did follow after him.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Trowa, Quatre and Wufei had eaten a very tense, very quiet dinner in what Wufei had termed the "small" dining room, despite its cavernous size. The three all had their worries, secrets, and very little in common, not a particularly good combination; Quatre alone wasn't enough to carry the conversation. In the end he had given up, eating his dinner in quiet and hoping that Duo would eventually start joining them during the evenings, or at least that one of the other two would start talking. With Wufei, at least, it might just be nervousness.

And thinking of Duo and his absence sent Quatre's thoughts spinning in the direction of the dinner that was going on in some unknown area of the castle, and who--_or what_, his mind whispered--Duo was eating dinner with. They knew a name, true, Lord Heero Yuy, but since he (and with him, his family) had been gone for over 500 years now, that meant nothing. Less than nothing, maybe. He had scared Ellyaugh into insanity, not that he was all that far from it in the first place, and was presumably hoping that Duo would fall in love with him.

They didn't even know what, exactly, the curse was; how it had been cast on the castle, why it had been cast, nothing.

After Quatre's train of thought had completed several (noticeably circular) cycles, he gave up. Excusing himself, he left for his room.

Seeing that Duo's door was half-open he poked his head in, assuming he wouldn't be intruding. He was startled to see that Duo seemed to have fallen asleep, still dressed for dinner and sprawled on the floor. Quatre quietly walked into the room, trying to be unobtrusive, and Duo's eyes flew open as he approached, falling back into a fighting position almost immediately, eyes narrowed.

"Duo?" said Quatre quietly.

"Oh, it's just you..." managed Duo sleepily, his eyes dropping closed again. His breathing quickly evened back out.

Quatre smiled softly and pulled a blanket off of the bed, laying it over the boy on the floor--it was startlingly cold tonight after last night's relatively temperate weather--then left the room.

"He's asleep," murmured Quatre to Trowa as he left the room, prompted by the other's questioning look. "Good night, then." Trowa nodded in reply and they entered their respective rooms.

Both were tired, but neither fell asleep quickly. Both were plagued with doubts and questions. They did not know _nearly_ enough about the situation they were in...

**A/N:** And there you have it!

I'll do my best to get the next chapter out soon. Thank you very much to everyone who's reviewing; you're all the people who keep me writing!


	4. Chapter 4

**Lovely**

**Chapter Four**

By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing or the poem "Cassandra, Iraq," which was written by C. K. Williams. (I can dream, though, right?)

**Author's Notes:** This chapter took much longer than I thought it would take, largely because it **would not end**. Seriously—this is ten pages long. I think my last one was five. So I finally just cut it shorter than I had planned on, which is why this won't be another month.

As always, my eternal gratitude to LadyFrisselle for betaing. Any mistakes are entirely my own fault, and she has kept me from making many, many more.

Happy Halloween, y'all! (I'm going to be Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist. It will be fun.)

oOoOoOo

"Because we, in our foreseeings, our having been right  
Are repulsive to ourselves, fat and immobile, like toads.  
Not toads in the garden, who after all are what they are,  
But toads in the tale of death in the desert of sludge."

--_Cassandra, Iraq_ by C. K. Williams

oOoOoOo

Time passed slowly on a day-to-day basis in the haunted castle, minutes seeming like hours and hours seeming like days, but at same time the days slipped by with unnerving speed. Two weeks took forever and, at the same time, slipped by like quicksand.

Duo, according to Wufei, made the time pass considerably more slowly than it would otherwise.

Days for Duo, Quatre and Trowa were spent poking around the castle, sometimes in the company of Wufei, and playing on its grounds; Quatre generally took some time out of the afternoon to teach Duo how to read. He proved good at it, earning a measure of grudging respect from Wufei, to nearly everyone's surprise. The library and the lessons provided another distraction from the incredible boredom of life in the castle.

Duo ate dinner with Heero each night, which translated to Duo chattering at Heero (or the wall; they were about equally responsive) when he wasn't eating; when his mouth was full, there was heavy, pointed silence. On occasion Heero would offer a muffled snort or acidic comment. Heavy silence was the general rule in the second dining hall, where Quatre, Trowa and Wufei ate, despite Quatre's attempts at conversation.

Perhaps most noticeably—it was startling how quickly life, even in a cursed castle, fell into monotony—Quatre and Trowa hadn't met Heero yet, despite the length of time they had been his 'guests.' They had heard reports of Duo's dinners with him (and many, many complaints about his silence and, when that was broken, general lack of decency and people skills) but had yet to even so much as catch a glimpse of him.

Duo's first dinner with Heero had been the most successful; it was the only evening they had had anything approaching a civil conversation, that being the one about the plague. Duo had put up with Heero's prickly barriers for a while but had quickly gotten tired of making up excuses for him and started giving as good as he got—most evenings ended in at least one set of bruised tempers and feelings.

Duo had slowly grown less edgy in Heero's presence, though it didn't show; he had taken care about that from the first. He had grown more comfortable just when it came to being around him—slowly, his natural exuberance was replacing the one he had manufactured as a custom-made mask for the situation—and more comfortable when Heero asked for his hand in marriage each evening, and he refused, as he began realizing that Heero really _didn't_ react.

It was at the two week mark exactly when Duo finally lost his temper. He had had exactly 14 dinners with _Lord_ Yuy, just the two of them, and he had yet to hear a nice word out of him. Hell, he had yet to get a non-critical remark in response to anything he said. Some evenings he was lucky with a response at all. And neutrality really wasn't all that much to ask for when _he_ was the one who had gotten dragged into this curse thing in an attempt to free_ Heero_ from it.

And he certainly wasn't the one who had been cursed to spend eternity here. He just had a handful of months, maximum, before he was released, and he certainly wasn't going to spend it _encouraging_ the most inhuman person he had ever met, regardless of physical appearance. Looking like an out-and-out monster was one thing, but he didn't have to put up with someone who insulted him at every half-chance.

Admittedly, Wufei wasn't much better—maybe Heero's physical appearance bothered him more than he had thought, or at least admitted to.

But that wasn't fair. Wufei was as uptight as Heero, but he had moments of decency, and he was fair. He had at least given Duo a chance, eventually. Heero's clearly-shown hatred hadn't wavered since Duo had shaken him slightly with his introduction, despite Duo's best efforts to at least reproduce the experience. It helped that he spent more time around the bunch of them than just the required dinner.

So Duo was _frustrated_. He wasn't asking for friendship, or even tolerance, just a touch of decency now and then. A _response_. Or at least a release. For all the good the dinners were doing he might as well have eaten them with a brick wall. An imposing, admittedly scary brick wall, but still a wall. Actually, the wall would have been better company.

Duo wasn't above switching tactics…

oOoOoOo

Heero walked into the dining room and was surprised to notice that it was empty. Duo had, in the past, been slightly early or exactly on time; Heero had always made it a point to be slightly late, arriving after Duo had.

But something had changed. He reviewed what Duo had done that day, what had happened at the dinner they had had the evening before; there was nothing out of the ordinary about either event, nothing to warrant the sudden change to the previous patterns. It was…Strange for a habit to be so suddenly broken. Duo had even left to get ready for dinner at the same time as he normally did…

A few minutes after he had settled himself into his customary chair the door banged open and Duo entered, dressed much more informally than he had on previous evenings; he had ignored formal clothes altogether, wearing what he had worn that day, simple black pants and a rough, non-descript shirt.

Duo simply nodded to Heero, not even leaving enough time for a response before switching his attention, foregoing his typical greeting, which was loud, involved and informal. He swung himself into his chair and served himself, still silent, with a perfectly formed façade that said that this was perfectly normal, exactly as things always happened.

In the beginning, actually, minus the aberrations of his arrival and appearance, it was much as it always was: dead silent while Duo ate and Heero watched. Eventually he would slow down on stuffing his face and begin bombarding Heero with a near-unintelligible barrage of questions, comments and observations.

But he didn't. He kept on eating and, because he wasn't pausing to talk, finished much faster than he had previous evenings. The silence was much heavier, to the point where it was nearly _painful_ it was so in-your-face obvious, even by Heero's standards

"'Night," he said shortly to Heero the instant he finished, standing to leave without any further comments, pausing slightly to give Heero the time he needed to ask his question.

"Will you marry me?" The lord managed to grind out.

"No," said Duo sharply, not adding any excess onto his answer as he had the other evenings, as he had gotten more comfortable around Heero.

He left the room quickly, stride quick, purposeful and lacking his usual bounce. There was nothing in his body language that would indicate _acceptance_ or _tolerance_ for **anything** more from Heero.

Idly, Duo wondered how many days of the same treatment it would take before Heero either changed his behavior or confronted him about his own changes.

He smiled grimly to himself. Duo didn't give him long.

oOoOoOo

Heero was truly startled.

Within the space of a day—or even less—Duo had completely shattered everything he had expected of him. He had just reached the point where maybe _some_ of Duo's chatter wasn't all _that_ bad, all things considering, and it had changed. He had shut down, closed in; clearly something he didn't come by naturally; it was about as far as you could get from his natural inclinations, as far as he knew.

And, as Duo had just proved so spectacularly, he clearly didn't know him as well as he thought he had.

He certainly didn't act that way around the castle's other inhabitants; Heero knew, because he had taken to watching them interact during the day, with nothing else to do. They were all, even Wufei, treated the way he **had** been, with slight variation, up until this evening.

Why was he the one person who had been singled out? Logic said that it was a direct result of being held captive, expected to fall in love with Heero. With a monster.

But it had taken him two weeks of treating him exactly as he had treated all the others—the human ones, the ones unconnected to the curse, or at least not responsible. That… made no sense.

Heero had thought that he had begun to understand the loud brown-haired boy and how he worked.

Clearly, he had made an unforeseen mistake. This warranted further investigation…

It had been a long time since he had been wrong about somebody.

It had been five hundred years…

oOoOoOo

"How was your day?" asked Wufei formally as he came up beside Heero, falling into step with the larger man. He could tell he was irritated—he was walking faster than was normal for him, the movements more tightly controlled, jerkier.

"I don't understand." That was a major concession for Heero to make. "He's just…Stopped. He's not talking unless it's necessary. Not… looking at me. Interacting at all, unless it's unavoidable. He didn't talk all through the meal…"

Wufei raised an eyebrow, already planning on how to make Maxwell's future as unpleasant as possible while leaving him somewhat unharmed.

Heero's better-than-human eyes picked up the gesture even in the half-lit gloom of the darkened hallways. Wufei couldn't see more than where the walls ended and the hallway began, and the outline of Heero's hulking shape against the windows.

He had gotten used to these late-night walks over the years.

"And he hasn't changed his actions around anyone else. Other than this event, his behavior has been consistent, and continues to be so. It's opposite of his natural personality… It's inexplicable."

Interesting, thought Wufei, that it had taken him two weeks to start this. What had happened, to cause such a sudden change?

He had the feeling that nobody but Duo knew the answer to that.

Well, then, it sounded like he needed to have a conversation with the ex-slave.

oOoOoOo

The sun was barely clearing the horizon when Duo was roused from his sleep by an angry Wufei pounding on his door and shouting.

Neither person was particularly happy at the moment.

"What do you** want?"** bellowed Duo through the door.

"We need to **talk**, Maxwell. If you are lucky, you will not be bleeding by the end of the conversation."

"And **what** does this have to do with getting me out of bed at quarter-to-fuckit-early in the morning?"

There was a –_thump_- from the next room over before a door opened and Trowa stuck a disgruntled head through it.

"You have neighbors. Shut up."

"God, even Trowa's still asleep!"

"**Quiet, Maxwell.**"

oOoOoOo

Five minutes later, a scowling Duo presented himself outside his door.

"The **fuck** is this about?"

Wufei merely glared and motioned at a door; Duo vaguely recognized it as the one that led to the castle grounds. Sighing loudly, recognizing that he wasn't going to get any more out of the scowling lord unless he followed his orders; he headed off down the hallway, Wufei following closely at his heels.

"So, _sunshine_, what's this all about?" Duo spat out.

"Last night. Explain."

"Well, I ate dinner with his Lordship Grumpypants I'm-gonna-kill-you Yuy. Or at least, I ate dinner and he glared at me, 'cause he makes a point of not eating and he's a big fan of that whole 'glaring' thing. And then I talked with Trowa and Quatre for a while and went to bed. Hell, I didn't even _see_ you last night. What has you all up-in-arms?" Duo continued as they walked across a sweep of the palace's lawn, the grass stiff with frost.

"Oh, is that all, _Maxwell_?" sneered Wufei. "Heero seems to think differently. Explain. **Now.**"

"Ohhhhh, _that_. He noticed? And here I was, thinking he didn't even bother enough to listen to what I say. Or, at the very least, he was hoping that I was going to eventually 'shut my useless mouth before it got me killed'—and I'm quoting here!—because in that case I think he'd count it as a plus."

Wufei sighed, deflated slightly. Maxwell—Duo—had a point. He had never seen the two of them interact, but it was definitely something Heero would say. To Duo in particular. He had _known_ these two would be a bad combination…

Still. He had known Heero for fully 500 years longer than he had known Duo—and the former was a lot less annoying than the latter.

His eyes narrowed into a vicious glare. "Please keep in mind the actions your ideas cause on others. It would be a good thing to keep in mind. Not everyone will react well to you. Not everyone is what they seem right from the first. Not everyone is as _obvious_ as you. Try what you pulled again and I will be sure that you will remember this **very, very well**."

Duo's eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed before returning to normal. Lop-sided grin on his face, he replied with a flippant note in his voice. "I'll be sure to keep it in mind, certainly."

"You do that."

oOoOoOo

After ensuring that Maxwell had returned to his room and, presumably, his own bed, Wufei headed off to find Heero.

He found Heero lurking around the corridors of the Eastern Wing, trying to look like he wasn't doing what he was doing, which was brooding.

He nodded slightly at Wufei in recognition.

"I've talked to Maxwell."

Heero didn't react, except to look sharply in Wufei's direction.

A few moments passed quietly.

"Early. And why?" The question was slightly emphasized—Wufei had no doubt trespassed onto what amounted to the unstable ground of Heero's mind. He wouldn't like the idea of Wufei "protecting" him—not that Wufei had done it for the reasons Heero thought he did—and Wufei was starting to get the impression that there was more going on for him than what was immediately obvious when it came to Duo Maxwell. That made sense. Maxwell could be incredibly pervasive, worming his way around any barriers, physical or emotional. And he was annoying—phenomenally so.

He knew that that must be hard for Heero, to have to deal with someone with that sort of personality after so many years of near-solitude. And Duo didn't know that, and had reacted naturally enough, if highly inadvisably.

"I wanted to know what had changed."

"It's none of your business," said Heero, voice taught, the strain in his tone nearly tangible, and Wufei looked at him in quickly recovering surprise.

"Yes, it is," said Wufei easily. Not the most diplomatic response, but it was true, and maybe rising to the slight hint of challenge Heero had given would help things along.

This was not going to be an easy discussion either way.

"And what makes you think that?"

"I am as much involved with this curse as you are and—and— Damn it, Yuy, I worry about you and how people react to you and how you look at yourself and how you react with that hyper, over-bearing idiot of a being the curse has picked out for you."

There was a weighty silence, the two of them frozen with a combination of their natural reserve and a righteous indignation. Dust motes swirled lazily in the golden patch of rising sunlight that was pouring through a window; Heero shifted slightly away from it, trying to keep to the shadows he used to hide himself as much as possible.

Wufei finally conceded a harsh sigh, the sound somewhere between hurting and aggrieved. "Maxwell is an idiot, but you can be just as thick-headed sometimes."

Heero gave a low growl of irritation before silencing the inhuman noise, slit-pupiled eyes flashing briefly with hurt, that such an animalistic instinct would come so quickly, so insidiously, so _naturally_, to him.

Wufei found the words to continue. "If you don't talk to him, don't acknowledge him, don't treat him civilly, he'll react eventually. It doesn't excuse anything, but that is what happened."

It made sense to Heero, too much sense. How had he missed something so painfully obvious? Some irrational part of his mind blamed it on Duo, on how he complicated things, confused them, bore them up and brought them crashing down.

Heero managed a stiff nod, but it was hard to admit that he had been doing something so utterly _wrong_, that he had been at fault for the situation. Maybe not entirely, but he couldn't completely blame the boy who had been pulled into this cut-off, surreal pocket of the world they all lived in—existed in, not _lived_—now.

"Try getting to know him," said Wufei, a sarcastic note in his voice, hiding the worry he felt about the situation. They were two lit fuses, Maxwell and Heero, growing dangerously short. "Try _talking_ to him. Figure out why he was a slave in the first place. He may not break the curse, but you can at least make things as easy as possible in the meantime."

oOoOoOo

Duo was _maybe_, just a _little_ bit, regretting what he had done.

Sure, he had expected a reaction, that was why he did it. He was getting damn sick of _Lord_ Yuy's superiority and constant annoyance and refusal to even _try_ to get alone. **He** wasn't the one who had been forced into this by threats to the person who controlled him unequivocally. **He** wasn't the one who had done whatever had caused the curse in the first place. **Duo** was the one who had ended up making the effort and trying to get along, really, and then given up.

Or not given up, exactly, so much as tried a different tactic. Fighting fire with fire—but clearly it hadn't worked.

He hadn't expected that Heero had held views about him beyond the ones he had voiced—total, unaltered contempt in every sense of the word.

Duo suspected that Wufei had told him a lot more than he had meant to when he had come barging into his room like that, all up-in-arms.

For one, he knew that Heero had cared about what he had done—and probably hadn't reacted favorably. That wasn't certainly new information. He had expected that Heero would _notice_, the man was damned observant, but not care, particularly, except for maybe slight relief. He had been expecting some sort of wait—a challenge, part of his mind had labeled it—before his silence finally got to Heero. He had spent the past five hundred years with nobody but Wufei for company, and he definitely wasn't chatty by nature—unless Duo had misjudged him even more than he already had—and he had been far from positive that the pointed silence would even work.

Apparently, it had, and more dramatically than expected. Wufei had found out about it, and he didn't know how much Heero had told him, but probably not much, considering the people involved.

Wufei had been upset by the fact that Heero had been upset. That said something, certainly.

There was a definite element of guilt to what he was feeling, mixed up with all the confusion and resentment and—maybe—loneliness. He hadn't expected Heero to actually _care_ that he had changed like that, that he had shifted away from his attempts at friendliness. He had expected it to bother him, sure, that was why he had done it, but he had also resigned himself to the fact that Yuy was a heartless bastard, despite his no-doubt impeccable heritage. And apparently, that wasn't true. He cared about Duo to _some_ extent, to the point where it upset him when Duo brought out the uncaring-and-heartless act on his own.

All this raised an important question: Was the guy so emotionally stunted that he actually thought that monotone grunts and unregulated sarcasm were the best way to make someone like him? Because, if that was the case, his people skills were potentially worse than the worst sides of Duo, Trowa and Wufei put together, which was pretty damn bad, all told.

oOoOoOo

Heero hadn't thought that Duo would just get tired of being decent to him. He just hadn't… realized. He didn't like people's actions when he wasn't commanding those actions, didn't like overlooking such obvious things. He didn't like being affected by silly, childish actions like that. Didn't like the delicate noose Duo now held, circling his own neck.

He wanted to blame Duo, and knew that that wasn't fair, but it was also partly correct, which made it all the worse.

Once-upon-a-time, he hadn't needed to worry about this. He had been in control, the end-all and be-all of the world his castle was.

And that was why he was—the way he was now.

Cursed. Powerless. Hated.

Alone.

And he didn't—he didn't—

…He was surprised that Wufei had defended him like that. He was nearly as reserved as Heero himself was, and he hadn't known that he had… cared… …That he would bother to defend him that way.

He didn't like being defended. He was more than capable of it himself, but still…

It was somehow nice, maybe, but that was a weak emotion, a flaw in his perfection, the icy shield he had created for himself, and he shouldn't allow it.

Heero still didn't think that he would tell Wufei that. Wouldn't discourage him any further to not do that in the future either. There was no point in bringing it up past the event, anyways, and Wufei didn't make a habit of it, so it was alright…

_And it had been nice._

Nice, like evenings with Duo had begun to become, comfortable and familiar even though they were new and somehow warming and annoying, an irritant, but good despite that, and he wasn't supposed to _want_ it, to _miss_ it, wasn't supposed to care at all.

He wasn't sure which of his voices he wanted to listen to, which side of his divided mind.

Heero didn't know how to react to Wufei's… advice. Not the perfect word, but the closest one. The inaccuracy was annoying.

His recommendations were good ones, but he wasn't sure how to go about them without hurting (_Duo,_ _himself_) …hurting.

Somewhere away from the formal dining hall, with it's arched ceiling lost in shadows and echoing length and separated chairs and heavy, breathless atmosphere, suffocating and painful.

Somewhere where he would be less...Horrifying, less real, less immediate. More forgettable, more **human**.

…It had been a long time since he'd visited the castle grounds. He had started avoiding the light because—because— _it hurt…_

No reason to have stopped, so no excuse.

But he should wait. Wait at least until tomorrow…

_No._

--End Chapter--

Thank you for reading! Please review!


	5. Chapter 5

**Lovely****  
Chapter Five**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Gundam Wing, or the events or characterizes portrayed therein.  
**Author's Notes:** Due to events the last chapter made me write (it was that or my life, seriously!) this story has taken an unforeseen turn of events and is now headed off in a direction I had never planned or intended. Nonetheless, I like it. I hope you will as well.

I would like to dedicate this fic to **Shevaleon** for being a lovely person and contacting me (I really appreciate it, and owe you several comments on pics!) and **LadyFrisselle** for being truly, phenomenal and incredibly wonderful and betaing for me. (You really have no idea how much I appreciate it! Thank you!) and **Trixters' Muse**, also for being wonderful and contacting me. (Your reviews and emails are always a treat to get! Thanks!)

oOoOoOo

So it was decided. He would make an attempt to get to know Duo. Because it was only fair, and he _had_ been raised to be a lord, to dispense justice, and maybe Wufei's attitude was affecting him more than he had thought; it had been 500 years, after all.

And putting it off would be a silly, useless act, giving in to a weakness.

oOoOoOo

There were three of them: Wufei, Duo and Trowa. Quatre was in the library but the other three were in the orchard, at least one and maybe two, or even all of them, reveling in the weather: glorious sunshine with just enough a breeze to keep it from being too warm. It would have been unseasonable if the castle grounds had had seasons.

All three noticed his approach fairly quickly, with a caution and awareness that spoke of a long history of mistrust and wariness for all of them. That was worth thinking over, but later. Now he should concentrate on the present, and a potentially dangerous situation. Trowa—Barton, was it?—was still an unknown quantity.

Trowa carefully noted the reactions of Wufei and Duo when Heero appeared in the orchard they currently inhabited, mentally recording the reactions, along with his own, for any potential insight they could provide. There was always the chance that it would prove necessary to protecting Lord Winner.

Duo hid his surprise well, but it was still noticeable, and it was difficult to tell whether it was because Heero was spending time with him, (at least, outside of the dinner they were required to spend together) and with them, or whether the unanticipated appearance was because of something else he hadn't guessed at. It was difficult to tell if there was still an element of fear in his reaction.

Wufei was inscrutable, which was clearly annoying Duo; Trowa guessed that his carefully constructed non-reaction was because he was, in actuality, quite surprised himself.

And Trowa himself—it was surprising, yes, but it was his job to be prepared. He had been given a fairly accurate description by Duo. Largely, Heero's appearance reinforced the difficulty in keeping Lord Quatre safe. Yuy was clearly faster and stronger than an un-augmented human would be, and apparently not social, which was, admittedly, not interchangeable with 'homicidal,' but a step in the wrong direction, and when you had been holed up in a castle with very minimal interaction for an unknown amount of time…

It was not an insurmountable difficulty, but one that would require work.

He nodded companionably at Yuy before his inattention was noticed, his resolve to monitor the situation reinforced.

The mood was noticeably tense, Duo noticed. He pitied Quatre for having to eat dinner with those two, Trowa and Wufei, every night—not that his own dinner companion was any better, or his dinners any more at ease. At least Trowa was merely quiet, and Wufei generally controlled his temper when it came to people other than Duo. On the other hand, Duo was a lot better at creating noise and conversation than Quatre was, even though Quatre was better at _making_ conversation. Probably came of being a Lord. It was hard to remember that he was one, sometimes…

Anyways… The mood needed some changing.

"Heya Heero! What brings you out here on this fine day?"

Yuy looked lost for words, flummoxed, even, and his expression was remarkably out-of-place on his dramatically inhuman features.

Duo's mood swings were nearly dizzying, thought Heero fuzzily, before metaphorically shaking the confused fog from his mind. There was something about the boy that managed to destroy his reserve and professionalism—it was even more obnoxious than Duo himself, which was saying something.

"Nothing," he bit out.

"Well then, you can stay and spend some time with us!"

Heero resisted the urge to (flee) make a tactically advantageous retreat, despite the fact that that had been his intention all along, and the reason he was out on the grounds at all was because of Duo (primarily) and the other two (a secondary concern.)

"Quatre's going to be out anytime, and we were just talking about what to do—today's weather's good enough that we were talking about going swimming—"

"No, Duo, you were trying to convince us that we should go swimming."

"_Trooooo_wa—"

"I don't understand why you feel the need to splash around like the undignified fool you are, Maxwell, and the fact that you think that anyone else would want to do the same is even crazier. Or stupider."

"Oh, why, thank you for your kind remarks, _Lord_ Chang, clearly your lessons on diplomacy have done you a great service."

"Quatre was talking about going on a picnic," offered Trowa.

Duo positively lit up. There was something fragile and innocent in his expression for a minute, something overjoyed, wonderstruck—like a lost child. It was quickly overtaken by unholy amounts of glee that were much better suited to the hyperactive teenager he was.

"_Oooooo_ let's do it let's do it let's do it!"

"There's nothing to get so overexcited about," growled Heero, his first comment since his brusque reply to Duo's greeting.

"I've never been on a picnic before!"

Nobody had time to reply to his curious statement. Hadn't his parents? If they were anything like him— If it mattered so much to him— Before Duo turned his attention to something a ways off in the distance.

"Heeeey, Quatre!" Duo yelled—loudly, Quatre was still a ways away—as he approached, the first to notice: the other three had had their backs towards him, facing towards Duo—he tended to draw attention towards himself, for better or for worse. Generally for worse.

The other three turned to face the approaching Quatre, each annoyed in their own way at being caught off guard.

He blinked heavily in surprise at Heero's appearance and everyone steeled themselves for everything that could go wrong from here on out—

But he recovered himself nearly visibly, a diplomat's training taking over, smiling at them and waving cheerily—

Before stopping, shaken, and staring at Heero in horror before clutching at his chest and collapsing, eyes wide with some glassy horror—

And Heero was gone, suddenly, simply not there, Wufei making an aborted attempt to chase after him—

Trowa was lunging for the collapsed form of Quatre, all business and steely intent and professionalism and a half-hidden current of true despair beyond that even he might not notice—

And everything, as Duo assessed, was shot to hell.

oOoOoOo

An on-edge Trowa stalked out of Quatre's room, nearly oozing danger and a barely-controlled killing intent. Duo remained unaffected by his presence, hovering outside the door, (while doing a good impression of not actually having any purpose there,) clearly nearly frantic with worry—and the silently watching Wufei noticed that he hadn't looked this stretched, this close to breaking, before, worse even than Trowa, who was probably the one Quatre was closest to, the one who was closest to Trowa. And he wondered what had happened…

But then he forced that train of thought away. He had enough to worry about.

_Like Heero._ He had walled himself up somewhere in the castle; it responded to his thoughts, and there was no way to get to wherever he was that he could find. He knew, because he had tried, and now it was well past midnight, 14 hours since he had fled, and he didn't know what it would do to him, what would end up happening. The others might not realize it, but he did: the Winner had just reaffirmed everything Heero thought of himself, and so soon after Duo had done the same, and he suspected that that would go further towards destroying the man than 500 years of near-solitude had.

And there was still the matter of the so-studiously-not-frantic Duo, as close to snapping as Trowa, both so unaware, and the continuing unconsciousness/unresponsiveness of Quatre.

Wufei had so much he needed to do, but so little he could actually affect—

oOoOoOo

**Author's Notes:** Again, sorry for the wait! Happy Nondenominational Winter Holidays, and good luck in the New Year!

Please review! If only because it gives me the boost I need to update.


	6. Chapter 6

**Lovely**  
**Chapter Six**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of the characters, events or settings featured within it.

**Author's Notes:** Brief warning: Duo has a potty mouth. This chapter will feature obscenities.

It looks like this fic will be 15 chapters all told. I finally hammered out an outline for the last bit! I need to finish it before I leave for a major trip where I will not be writing in English, so it's going to be crunch time from here on out. Warning: I will probably not get it done. I'M SO SORRY!

Some things should be revealed this chapter! Sorry the last one was so confusing—it was for narrative purposes. And probably because I'm kind of making a botch of this story line.

As always, my eternal thanks go out to my phenomenal beta, LadyFriselle.

oOoOoOo

Duo strode into the dining hall absolutely _furious_. Heero wasn't present, so he sat down, served himself and sat glaring at the plate, his stomach knotted with rage.

When the door creaked open and the shadow that was Heero drifted in, Duo was on his feet and shouting in a few seconds flat—fast enough to surprise even Heero.

"—**and you didn't even have the decency to see if he was alright, you **_**ass**_**! What the fuck did you think you were doing, anyway, pulling that? You better not have any idea of what's going on, that's for damn sure!**"

Duo could manage an impressive volume, Heero realized. The yelling was loud enough to hurt. His own control, of course, was impeccable.

"**Shut up! You have no right to question me while I'm in my own castle!**"

_His_ loud reaction was entirely purposeful.

Duo didn't seem to be cowed by Heero's advantage, or by the threat of what he was. He simply glared back.

"It's just shock caused by fear, anyways," Heero continued, voice quieter but still cold, bitter.

"It's damn well _not,_" Duo muttered, venomous. "He went far too cold, then too hot. For all I know he's cold again, because the fucking _castle itself_ forced me into the dining room. His breathing's slowed down. He barely has a pulse, but he's trying to _talk_, throat flexing but no sound coming out and his breath coming too fast. He is not _in shock_, you condescending bastard, he's steps away from death because of something that is almost definitely **your fault**."

"_You're_ the reason he's here the first place," Heero sneered. He **did not** appreciate being verbally attacked in his own castle by a guest for such a _stupid_ reason that was out of his control anyways, to top things off. "It's as much your fault as mine—if you hadn't torn a gaping hole in the barrier coming through here, he would be safely at home, serving his lands. I'd imagine that his family is _frantic_ that he's disappeared off of the face of the earth."

Duo blanched. The utterly horrified look that appeared on his face before blankness flooded onto his features was strong enough, desperate enough, to force Heero back a step, irrationally and involuntarily.

Duo turned and ran, leaving the monster behind him.

oOo

It was slightly before midnight or slightly after when Trowa exited Quatre's room.

"He woke up briefly before going back to sleep, and now he's breathing right, and his temperature's normal," he said, voice quiet, to the waiting Wufei, who was very studiously _not worried_.

He still relaxed visibly.

"I'll go tell Duo the news," Trowa offered.

"Good luck," muttered Wufei. "He hasn't been to his room since before dinner."

Trowa frowned slightly. Nothing sounded better right now than _sleep_, and running around a dark castle looking for an exceptionally-good-at-hiding pick-pocket and thief was an even less attractive idea than anything else he could think of, within reason—excluding sleep, of course. There was no guarantee that he would even find him.

But he did owe it to Duo to tell him how Quatre was doing. He was probably frantic.

"I wonder what happened," he muttered. It would have to be something dramatic to keep him away from Quatre—it had taken the castle itself moving under his feet, drawing him towards the dining room, to make him leave his bedside in the first place. Even then, it had been a close thing.

"I should probably go find him," he muttered.

"I'll go too," said Wufei, face set and determined. Trowa mentally upped the chance that they would find Duo considerably—Wufei was considerably more familiar with the castle than even Duo was, and with two searchers they could cover more ground faster.

He nodded an acknowledgment, and the two set off.

oOo

The Morning Lady (1) had risen by the time Trowa found Duo; he was slinking back towards his room, from the gardens.

"Quatre's awake," he said simply. He was bone-tired, and though he was _capable_ of functioning without rest for much longer than this—and he had, as a mercenary—he didn't like to.

The emotional stresses of the evening were catching up to him. He _liked_ Quatre, who was interesting and fiercely intelligent and treated him like a person, more than he had liked any of his charges in the past. His heart had started painfully when he had seen him collapse.

Duo looked even more tired, if possible, and—there was something _off_ about him. There was a sense of exhaustion, loneliness, hurt and guilt about him—or maybe it was something else.

Whatever it was, it was covered up by sheer relief when Duo practically _beamed_

"Can I talk to him?" he said, enthusiasm radiating off of him and managing to seem nearly awake.

"He's asleep," said Trowa, a trifle amused and bemused.

"Uh… Right."

"Try the morning."

"Right. You know, you look like you could use some sleep, Trowa."

He was so torn by how to respond to that, with outrage or with outrage and accusations of hypocrisy—he had been out looking for _him_, damn it, and Duo certainly wasn't looking all that chipper himself—that he didn't manage to choose one in time. Duo had stumbled into his own room by the time he had the words, and had probably collapsed onto the bed.

Oh, well—he could yell at him for running off (and try to pry the story out of him) tomorrow. He'd also start working on figuring out what, _exactly_, happened to Quatre. He had a **duty** to, after all.

oOo

Duo was there when Quatre woke up.

"_Hey!_ Quatre! You're okay!" he said.

"Nngh," said Quatre, eloquently; his throat was a bit dry.

Duo laughed, mostly for the sheer joy of it. There was something off, Quatre could tell; he was _too_ relieved, too manic. This—Quatre's collapse—had cut too close to something else for Duo's comfort. Now he was hiding.

He still handed Quatre a glass of water, which he drank gratefully. At least his little fainting spell (Gods above, that's embarrassing even to _think_) hadn't left him too weakened, now that he was over it and had had some sleep—some true sleep that is.

"Duo," he said in greeting, once he could speak.

"How do you feel?" There was still relief in Duo's voice, but also worry, a strong undercurrent of it in his words.

"Good. A little tired, but good," Quatre said. It's the truth, mostly.

"Do you know what happened?" An unspoken 'Will it happen again?' could be plainly heard.

"Yes," Quatre said, then sighed, and opened his mouth to answer. Before he could continue, Trowa wandered into the room, still looking half asleep.

"Good," Quatre said absently. Duo, correctly assuming that it wasn't directed at him, ignored it.

"Good morning," Trowa said.

Quatre and Duo said their own "Hello's" simultaneously—Quatre blinked, then smiled sheepishly, while Duo laughed.

"Quatre was just going to tell me what happened," prompted Duo.

"I know my eyes don't show it, but I'm an empath," (2) Quatre admitted, in a rush. "Not a strong or reliable one, but enough that I need to keep my gift in check around others."

Trowa straightened, stiffening slightly and imperceptibly, at the admission.

"And I think the curse had amplified Lord Heero's, um, mental footprint. How much room his thoughts take up, and how much strength they have. I have to admit, I've never had any true training, though, so I don't know for sure. It's not much more than an educated guess."

"Ohhh," said Duo. He was maybe feeling a _little_ guilty for yelling at Heero.

"The pressure of it was just too much—it just overloaded my mind." Quatre looked actively embarrassed. "I'm really not much of a mage, and too sensitive for the scale of my gift."

"Will it happen again? How far away from him do you need to be?" Trowa was all business.

"I don't know," said Quatre, bleakly.

oOo

It was another evening, and, again, Duo beat Heero to the dining room, where the dinner was already out on the table, steaming gently.

His dinner seat was as little as three, as much as five, feet away from where it normally was.

Duo sat down and waited.

It was probably half an hour before Heero strode into the room.

The manor's lord was glowering darkly—more so than usual—and sticking to the shadows, almost defensive. He looked more than half-feral and was blaringly, unsubtly, dangerous.

"Please partake of that which I am able to offer," he bit out—Duo hadn't served himself yet. It was the first time he had bothered to give the pleasantry. It was not the first time Duo had waited for Heero before eating.

Duo cast a cool glance at the man across from him; then appeared to turn his attention to the table and his plate. "I am lucky to feast on the bounty you have so generously given," he muttered, voice low and dark, nearly rebellious.

He had barely put down his fork before Heero was on his feet; it was only through iron control that Duo kept from flinching back. He had gotten used to Heero, somewhat, but it had not been a—_comfortable_ evening.

"Will you marry me?" asked Heero, voice blank—not angry, not cold, not anything.

"No, thanks." Duo's tone, at least, was warmer. Not that that meant much.

oOo

"I just feel so guilty!" Quatre was pacing, driven to distraction. He was out in the moonlit gardens with Trowa, talking; the night was chilly, and Trowa could smell frost in the air. It had been uncomfortably warm the night before, and it had snowed, just the faintest dusting, the night before.

"I've never really met Lord Heero—not at all, actually—except for that, and then I have to fuck it up somehow…

"And Duo's furious, and that's not helping. And I still don't know what to think about the situation to start with, and I _certainly_ don't know what Heero thinks, and I don't even know what Duo thinks. I can't do anything, can't even offer support when I don't know what to say or how to act, and I messed things up this much when I _did_ get involved. The gods know what I'll do if I actually try to fix anything…!

"And you're here too, and my family's probably frantic. I just keep on causing problems."

"I don't mind being here," said Trowa quietly, looking up.

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BetaNote: This is Dream's Beta Lady Frisselle. I think we should all encourage her to finish this story….Even if we have to wait a long time. It's too good not to finish.

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(1) This world's version of the morning star. There's a creation myth to go along with this… It should feature in a later chapter.

(2) I've mentioned this before, but in the world this story is set in, you can tell if people have any magical ability by their eyes—often through an unusual color, but sometimes by eyes with an ordinary color but an unusual intensity or depth.


	7. Chapter 7

**Lovely**  
**Chapter Seven**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing, or anything related to it, in any way, shape or form; neither do I own the story Beauty and the Beast, although it's way past it's copyright date by now. The "mythology" for Terrae I've created here _is_ of my own invention, as is Terrae itself, and the rest of the world this is set in.

**Author's Notes:** Sometimes the writing works. Sometimes it doesn't work. The past few chapters of Lovely haven't worked; this one _has_. Bliss!

Again, there are 15 planned chapters for this story, meaning there's 8 more to go, and I'm going to stop writing in English sometime around late August/early September (so I can concentrate on learning another language.) I'm trying to finish this up before then, but I can't make any promises.

That said, thank you so much for all the support people have offered me! I'm glad people are enjoying the story.

As promised, this chapter features a mythological interlude in the form of a creation story created for Terrae. It's been adapted from the general over-reaching themes of several different cultures (various Native American Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, Chinese… It's a hobby) but is pretty much of my own creation.

**As always, thank you so much to my beta, Lady Friselle.**

oOoOoOo

"_No one would wait forever."_

_--Signal Fire by Snow Patrol_

oOoOoOo

"Huh. I wonder what's with all the white roses all of a sudden?" Duo said, musing aloud.

It was a few days, nearing a full week, since Quatre had woken up, and Duo was with Quatre; the two of them had decided to go out and explore the extensive gardens more thoroughly, while Trowa and Wufei continued their game of chess in the library. It had been raining, earlier, and the two of them were already soaked through, from brushing against and pushing through bushes soaked with rainwater.

Duo was the only one who had seen Heero at all, since Quatre had collapsed, and even that was only during dinner—and for the first few days he had only made a five-minute appearance to growl his proposal.

"There are a lot here, isn't there?" Quatre replied. "'Roses are for love, except for white roses. White roses are for forever—' That's what my grandmother used to tell me, at least."

Duo laughed. "I got told the same thing! Only it was my mother. She'd served as lady's maid to some rich noblewoman, once upon a time, and she'd picked the language of flowers up. She used to tell it to me instead of bedtime stories." Duo smiled, his expression more reserved (but more unguardedly happy) than it usually was.

"I wonder if it's a speaking garden…" Quatre said, brightening a little. The grounds were pretty, but there hadn't been much more than that to keep the two boys occupied.

The garden was tastefully and formally designed, but it seemed that it had been neglected recently. The dark evergreen hedge should have been strictly clipped, but it had been neglected, forming a more natural, hap-hazard appearance, and the white roses had rioted through the garden bed under their free reign, weaving themselves through the other plants until parts of the hedge couldn't even be seen under the tangle of blossoms and thorn-covered vines. A fountain still trickled water, though it was half-covered in moss and being slowly enveloped by a bush that was in turn covered with the ever-present roses.

Most of the flowers were in white, where there were any at all, and heavy pots formed out of white marble stood, irregularly placed, throughout the square of greenery the hedge fenced off; the path of white marble stepping stones wove through the jungle of plants, edged with bright red flowers, one of the few sparks of color in the garden.

"Well," Quatre said, "the hedge is yew."

"For sadness," finished Duo. "What are those spiky things in the pots?"

"Aloe, for bitterness and pain. We had them back in Maae—I'd never thought I'd see them here. They're good for sunburn. And there's wormwood, for absence."

"Nope, woodworm's for absinthe," Duo muttered, to great private amusement. "Red geraniums are for stupidity and hydrangeas for—"

"Frigidity?" Quatre said, face purposefully innocent.

Duo laughed out loud. "Never heard that one. Nope, I got told that hydrangeas were for heartlessness. Dogwood for duration, though—it matches the roses."

"Dogwood?" Quatre said, eyeing the waxy, four-petal flowers Duo had indicated. "We always called that a cornel-tree, but it has the same meaning."

Duo shrugged. "Basil for hatred."

"Or for love," Quatre added.

"Peonies for shame."

"Heather for solitude."

"This looks like wolf's bane, but its flowering white," Duo said, poking gingerly at the plant in question.

"We had a white form in Maae," Quatre said, peering over his shoulder. "Wolf's bane means 'beware.'"

"Especially if you're a wolf," Duo added brightly. Quatre laughed a little. "Trumpet-flower for separation, and daffodils for egotism."

"This is what you call a daffodil?" Quatre said, pointing to the nodding, cupped white flower. Duo nodded. "We always called them narcissus. I'll have to tell you the story some time—but yes, definitely for egotism. And poppies for oblivion."

Duo sniffed at the air appreciatively. "And there's a mock-orange here somewhere—I can smell it. For deceit," he added. "This isn't a particularly cheery garden, is it?"

The two boys paused at the very end of the garden. Cautiously, Duo drew a finger down the leaf of the plant that flanked either side of the exit the hedge gapped open to form.

"Verain, for sorcery" Duo breathed.

"We call it verbena," Quatre said softly, a second after Duo, taking care not to touch the plant.

"You've heard the stories too, then?"

"That if you've got it, it takes your power and gives you back more, but roots insanity in you? Yeah," Quatre said, looking slightly shaky. "It happened to a magic-worker our family had employed, a while ago…"

The two left the still, serene garden quietly, preoccupied with what it had had to say.

"Freaky," Duo said, finally. Quatre managed to crack a grin at that.

"Definitely," he agreed.

"Yeah, I liked the water gardens better. Hey, I bet we can find a conservatory!"

"You think we can? The castle's older than we're used to, it might not have one…"

oOo

The little garden filled with white roses had turned into a winding, hedge-edged pathway, with the bushes lining it probably twelve feet tall and carefully maintained. The grass underfoot was lush and trim; even though Duo and Quatre hadn't seen any sheep (1)—or, indeed, any animals at all, ever since their arrival in the castle. The five of them were the only living creatures inside the walls, and the ghosts—or 'memories,' as Wufei had described them once—of the servants were the only other things that moved (and even then intangibly) except for the castle itself.

"I wonder where this is going—" Duo said as they turned a corner.

They were surprised to find themselves looking at Heero.

"Oh!" said Quatre, the word transformed into a gasp of surprise. Duo watched him carefully, but there were no signs of collapse.

Heero looked—actively startled; his widened eyes diluted the threat of his rising hackles.

"Fancy meeting you here," Duo said, with a grin carefully calculated to ease the rising tension between the three of them—nevertheless, he had a watchful eye on Quatre in case he reacted to the lord's presence again, and he was also paying careful attention to Heero himself. Relations hadn't been good between the two of them, and he was strong enough that Duo didn't have a chance in Hell of survival, if it came to a fight; even if Heero _didn't_ get a jump on him.

"It's a pleasure," Quatre murmured, looking surprised—probably because of both Heero's presence and the fact that he was getting a good look at him for the first time, and because he hadn't fallen over in a dead faint. Duo thought, whimsically, that it would have taken a not inconsiderable amount of work for any other person to keep those words from sounding bitter and/or sarcastic.

Heero nodded his head in acceptance of the greetings, and the three stood in a frozen, silent tableau for a few too-long minutes.

"I must be going," said Heero, voice stiff, at last, brief seconds after Quatre opened his mouth to say something both harmless and complex and interesting enough to base a conversation off of—it would have probably ended up being about the weather, which changed between seasons on a day-to-day whim in the hidden castle. The Maaean boy shut his mouth quickly.

"See you around, Heero!" Duo called out.

"I see you every day at dinner, Maxwell," ground out Heero, not bothering to turn, so the sound seemed echoed from his retreating back.

"Yeah, great chat now, but what will we have left to talk about later?" muttered Duo angrily. Quatre looked worriedly in his direction.

"Shouldn't you two be trying to get along?" he said, carefully.

"I can't stand him," Duo replied. "The guy's impossible. I don't know what this curse-thing was thinking, but it has some of the worst judgment I've seen. He's about as loveable as a brick, and he's just _not trying_." He carefully didn't mention recent arguments they'd had.

Quatre gave him a questioning look. He had the feeling that Duo was holding something back, purposefully or not, and he was _very good_ when it came to emotions. Still, he didn't want to pry. Duo was his friend, and he trusted him.

oOo

Heero had arrived at dinner that evening like he always did, sweeping into the room, striding directly and purposefully to his chair, glowering slightly at Duo while he served himself and then started eating before shifting his attention to something—anything—else. Sometimes he turned his attention back to Duo when he started talking, _if_ he started talking, but not always.

This evening, though, Duo had taken maybe three bites, laid his fork and knife and down with a _clink_ that rang with finality, then started speaking. "No, Heero, I will not marry you. Now that that's over, we should _go_ somewhere. Think of it as a quest! We can go quest for the smaller dining hall and have some _actual company_ for dinner. Not that you eat…"

Heero was staring at him in bewilderment. Hilariously, his ears had tilted back slightly with his surprise, reminding Duo strongly of a cat he had gotten to know, once upon a time.

And then Duo stood up and left, holding the door open for a minute before letting it fall closed with a shrug.

Inexplicably, Heero wanted to follow him.

_Why not? It was his castle, after all… And it would be good to see __Wufei__ again, at least._

oOo

When Heero arrived in the lesser dining hall, all of the chairs had pointedly disappeared from around the table; except the one that was next to Quatre.

Duo had served himself a plate of food that was now close to being thoroughly demolished, and was talking animatedly to (or maybe at?) Trowa about something or other. Wufei was interjecting comments as he saw fit, and Quatre seemed to be mostly observing—although the comments he _did_ offer were **listened** to.

Heero slid awkwardly into the chair, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how little he fit into the scene. Fortunately, the chair didn't break under his weight—they had at least had the good graces to pick a solid seat. As he sat, the chair strengthened beneath him, and adjusted itself slightly to better fit his height.

The castle had always been most aware of him and his needs, except for when it came to matters that truly concerned him. Except when it came to things he cared about.

"Anyways, we should all go out some night to look at the stars," Duo was saying. "Since Wufei knows so much, and all. _I've_ never been able to pick out more than the Ladies, and that's only because they were bright enough that we could see them in the city."

"Ladies?" asked Quatre.

"Yeah, the Ladies. Haven't you heard the story?" Duo said.

"No…"

"He's from Maae, Duo," Trowa interjected. "He's got no more reason to know about the Ladies than you do about the Seven Gifts."

"So it's a story?" Quatre frowned, trying to figure it all out.

"A creation story," said Wufei.

"Yeah!" continued Duo. "In the beginning, Time met with the Matriarch, who had been all alone, before he came, and from their union the Mother was born. But Time died of age, and then the Matriarch was left alone again, except for her daughter, the Mother.

"Then the Oldest Earth came, and the Mother bore his daughters, the Morning and Evening Ladies. But the Oldest Earth became angry with the Mother, who loved her daughters and her mother, the Matriarch, so he tried to block them out with smoke and ash. And the Matriarch grew angry, and her fury poured out of the sky in a rain of fire, and the Oldest Earth perished, and the Matriarch and the Mother and the Ladies were alone once more.

"And then the Creator and the In-Between Earth, who were brothers, came, and both fell in love with the beautiful Evening Lady, who at first would have nothing to do with them. But they pursued her, and eventually she came to love the Creator, and bestowed her favor upon him. And the In-Between Earth, in a jealous urge, caught her sister, the Morning Lady, who was not as fair in his eyes, and raped her, and their union bore a daughter, the Sky.

"Together, the Matriarch and the Mother and the Evening Lady and the Sky heard of this horrible deed, and they gathered their forces and attacked the In-Between Earth for what he had done. And he could not stand in the face of their power, and they pressed him further and further back, chasing him until he cried, 'Save me, for I am weak, and I erred, but I will not do so again.'

"But they did not listen to his pleas, and the Sky caught him fast, and the Evening Lady hurled the lightening she had caught—for only she was fast enough to catch the bolts—and struck him dead. And they turned their faces on him, and left him there without burial.

"When the Creator heard of his brother's death, he snuck away one night and returned to the place where his brother lay dead, and gave him life once more, which was his gift. And though he pleaded with his brother to stay, the In-Between Earth refused, and left, and the Creator returned home to the Evening Lady.

"But the In-Between Earth was still bitter, and so he mounted an attack on them in turn. And he struck out at the Morning Lady, whom he blamed for his trouble, but the Evening Lady, the Lady he still loved, and did not mean to kill, flung herself in front of her sister, trying to save her.

"When the Creator saw what his brother had done to his wife, nothing could contain his fury. He took back the gift of life he had given to the In-Between Earth, and turned away from his once-more-dead brother.

"But he could not bring the Evening Lady back to life, for she was too powerful. And the child she bore—his own—began to grow still inside her, so he cut her open and from her womb drew out the child, and gave him the life he had taken from the In-Between Earth, and this became the Young Earth, the earth we live on now.

"The Young Earth cried from birth, because he knew of the death of his mother; it had been born into his bones. And to comfort him, the Sky curled around him, and in-between them the Creator brought forth all the animals and plants, and the humans, in memory of the Evening Lady. And this became what we live between today. But they were made of his own body, and he died in the creating.

"And the Morning Lady stooped to cry over the body of her dead sister, and eventually her tears began to run through the Evening Lady's veins like the blood that had been spilled by the In-Between Earth's blow, and life sparked in her once more. And the two rose together, to rejoin the Mother and the Matron, watching over their own children: the earth and the sky. And that's the story."

There was a moment of quiet as the tail ends of the story faded into the air; the oddly stilted wording of the story had woven the five of them up together in a rhythmic spell.

Wufei looked startled. "I'm—impressed by the retelling you managed," he said finally.

"It's how my mother used to tell it to me," Duo shrugged.

"Thank you, Duo!" Quatre said. "It was a beautiful story. That reminds me—I was going to tell you about Narcissus, right? It all started with a man who believed himself to be the most wondrous person in the earth or the heavens…"

oOo

Trowa had excused himself, saying he wanted to finish the last chapter of a book he'd started reading. Duo left soon after that, claiming he was tired. Wufei managed to wrangle the fact that he didn't have anything in particular to do out of Heero, then claimed he, himself, wanted to run through some kata before bed and left, leaving Heero and Quatre together with no (polite) way for Heero to leave.

"It was a nice day today, wasn't it?" said Quatre, a bit desperately.

"Yes," Heero said, sounding unsure—as if he didn't know what to do, how to act. Duo was easier to respond to; he was annoying. But the Winner…

"I'm so sorry!" Quatre said suddenly, in a rush. "For collapsing like I did. There was no excuse… I don't know what you were informed of, but I'm an empath, and I just ended up overwhelmed by the strength of your thoughts—not that I ended up overhearing anything, don't worry about that, the over-all strength was enough that I barely got the most vague impressions—

"I'm making a mess of this… Really, though, I am sorry. It was unconscionably rude of me."

"It's—fine," Heero said.

There was another moment of heavy silence.

"I hadn't thought that Maae's attitude towards magic would have changed so much."

Quatre winced, though Heero couldn't see it; he had his faced turned to look at the table.

"It—hasn't."

There was another silence. Heero thought about asking, but didn't know how to bring up his question, not politely.

Quatre stilled answered his unvoiced curiosity. "My eyes—don't show it. I'm sure you've noticed that much. And it was never showy magic, so nobody realized, for quite a while. When it was discovered, the family couldn't afford to get rid of me, even if they had wanted to. I'm the only heir, but I have enough sisters that the fight to get one of _their_ sons onto the throne would have been—violent. It would have been likely that our holdings would have been split apart, with different factions following different possible heirs. And we've never been very religious, and nobody—except for one of my sisters—believes that we are mocking the great ones' power, certainly, so that wasn't a problem.

"And so my family moved to Terrae, where they could quietly find me a tutor, to help me learn to control my power, and wait for me to fully grow into it before we returned.

"—and that's why the three of us—Duo, Trowa and I—are all here right now. That Ellyaugh man was running from my family's guards when he found his way here; if he hadn't gone after me, he would have never found this place, and he would have never sent Duo, and I wouldn't have ended up walking into it as well, and Trowa wouldn't have been there at _all,_ because he wouldn't have been there to guard me."

"…It's as much the slaver's fault as it is yours," said Heero, not sure of what else to say. Not sure how comforting he was even capable of being, and not sure of what would be more disconcerting that doing nothing at all would be.

"Thank you," said Quatre with a sigh, relaxing a fist that had subconsciously clenched itself.

Heero couldn't think of anything else to say. "You're welcome," he said, after a minute, the rote phrases of polite speech slowly coming back to him. It had been—a long while, at the very least, since they had been automatic.

oOoOoOo

(1) The origins of the carefully-maintained suburban lawn is in fields of grass that were kept grazed to approximately lawn-level by sheep, way _way_ back there in time. (The More You Know!)

--End Chapter—


	8. Chapter 8

**Lovely  
****Chapter Eight  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Gundam Wing in any way, shape or form. I similarly do not own the story Beauty and the Beast, although _that's_ public domain, so in a way I suppose I do. This AU, the events that happen in this story and any non-canon characters and the game explained in this chapter are all of my own invention, however.

**Author's Notes:** …Yeah. I'm evil. As you'll see, I'm of the 'break-it-down, build-it-up' school of thought when it comes to relationships, so to speak.

Again, I really _am_ trying my hardest, but I can easily see myself failing to finish this story before September. I _have_ shortened it a bit, though…

And as always, eternal gratitude and thanks goes to LadyFrisselle for being a truly incomparable beta.

oOoOoOo

Duo was dreaming.

_It was back before the Plague, or at the beginning of it. He was playing with an illusion, spinning the little colored sparks of magic into a dog, a knight, the king's castle. There was a cluster of kids gathered around him, watching—he knew most of them, but not all._

_But no, it had to be the beginning of the Plague, because a lot of them were coughing, and the littlest one, the one who had called himself Darry, was coughing hard and every few minutes, and you could see the dark bruising in his arms where his veins were swelling._

_The Plague didn't kill painlessly or nicely._

_But this was wrong. It hadn't happened like this._

_And then the little warm sparks of magic, their colors strobing around the rainbow as he needed them, all changed to the sickly yellow-green of a fading bruise, or a faint one—the same as the colors twining themselves around little Darry's arms. Duo wasn't in control, now, the dream-self was._

_Then the magic scattered, splitting into smaller and smaller splinters until they were only visible as a faint, constantly moving glitter, moving in and out of the mouths and noses and then eyes and then skin of the kids as they talked and laughed and breathed and then died. The poison never got further than his own mouth, though it coated his skin, uselessly. The faint purple-black glow of his magic prevented it._

_And now he was walking the streets, but that faint almost-golden glitter of magic was everywhere, expelling itself from the dead bodies that littered the street, their bodies twisted by the disease that had killed them, skin more blue-black than flesh-colored. The rats that had feasted on the bodies lay dying as well, naked tails resembling knotted rope from the swelling._

_Nobody moved but him, the glow that surrounded him the same color as the bruises on the dead bodies. Behind a few of the doorways—too few of them—lone figures lurked: healers still strong enough to keep holding on, though they would still fall to the illness soon, and the few lucky individuals who had fought it off._

_The dead stood up in the streets and followed him, and he felt the magic seeping into his skin, turning him the same color as the dead. The sky glittered an unnatural yellow-blue as the little dots of magic that had come from him swirled and twisted and wove strange, branching patterns in the air that almost looked like veins._

_Power swirled over and around him, and_

Quatre was shaking him, waking him up. He looked at his friend with wide eyes for a few brief seconds, until he realized what had happened—a dream, of course—and relaxed.

"Whoah! Thanks for waking me up, Quatre—was I really being that loud?"

"I felt it," Quatre said bluntly, laying a hand flat against his chest, over his heart. "Duo, what's wrong? That wasn't just a dream."

Duo sighed. "It was nothing," he said. "Just memories from the Plague."

"I can feel you avoiding me. Please, will you trust me? I know its cliché, but talking can help."

"It'd take a whole lot of talking to help this," said Duo bleakly.

"Tell me," Quatre said.

"It was the Plague," Duo said again. "I was in the streets of the capital when it happened. There was a bunch of us; we were a gang, I suppose you'd say, but street kids just need to stick together for survival. My mother had died maybe a year ago, but we'd never been well-off, so I was already pretty much used to getting along rough. It wasn't bad. I was a good pick-pocket, and I had found a good 'family.' That's what we called it—none of us had ever had much in terms of family.

"And then the sickness came. We were some of the first to get sick. It always happens that way—you want to watch out for illness, you look at the poor."

oOo

Outside Duo's window, Heero paused, sensitive ears catching the flow of words.

oOo

"It was bad enough when it was just the illness. But then the magic got mixed up in it." Duo had turned his face towards his knees, hiding his face; his voice was low and tense, struggling to speak calmly. "I—

"I tried to heal them, but it j—just seemed to make it worse. Then they all started dying, and we didn't have anything to do with the bodies. We were too poor for graves, even at the beginning, and it was still before they started giving mass cremations."

Quatre had cut off the connection to Duo that had alerted him to his friend's distress entirely. His emotional wounds were—excruciatingly painful. It was also a deeply personal matter; the sensation of intrusion was too obvious, too cold, for him to be comfortable with it, now that Duo had started speaking.

"Darry was first, then Maius and July—they were brother and sister. Then Tob, then Sarali, then Jam. I didn't get sick, no matter that I spent all my time with the dying ones, and that I was in the streets, where even the rats were dying.

"I wasn't a healer—not that it did most people any good—but I had learned to force it. To fake it. Some good it did me. Like I said, I only seemed to make it worse. I stopped trying, after Jerry died. Emily had asked me what I had done to him, and didn't let me touch her until two days later, after her fever had gotten so high that she was hallucinating, and by then it was too late, she didn't even know who I was. She died six hours later.

"And then they kept on dying, until I was the only one left. Jilli died just two weeks before the end of the Plague. Afterwards, I got picked up by Ellyaugh. You know the rest." Duo shrugged, partly to hide the tears in his eyes.

"The gods above have mercy," Quatre whispered. "En take your pain."

Duo looked askance at him, feelings firmly hidden behind his mask. "En?" he said.

"One of the gods of death and of life, and the god of emotion," Quatre said automatically, startled by Duo's sudden turn-around; his masks ran deep, worryingly so, and came much too easily to him.

"I always forget you're not from here…" Duo said with a smile, shaking his head playfully, long braid flopping around his face.

"Really, though," Quatre said. "Thank you for sharing that with me."

Duo was serious again, all of a sudden. "Thank you for listening. You're the first person I've ever been able to tell."

oOo

Outside of the window, Heero moved on as Duo and Quatre said their goodnights, and Quatre left for his own room.

oOo

"So, what's the game?" asked Trowa questioningly.

"I dunno if it has a name," Duo said with a manic grin, "But we used to play it in the street. It's better with a few more people, but this'll work. So, the rules are, there's a Home-Keeper, and their goal is to keep the ball out of the 'Home.' The goal of the rest of us is to get it in, but we're each working independently of each other, so we're also trying to keep the others from getting it in. At the same time, we're all trying to keep it from touching the ground—that means that the Home-Keeper wins a point. You can play two ways past that—the person with the most points at the end of however long you decide the game's going to be, or the first person to a set number of points."

The other three players looked at him doubtfully. Wufei sneered. "I can't believe I agreed to do this," he muttered.

"It's because Duo asked if you were getting old and frail," Trowa said sensibly. Wufei shot him a smoldering glare. Duo snickered, and Quatre tried to cover his own laugh. Trowa himself, of course, was perfectly deadpan.

This was _exactly_ what Duo needed: pointless fun, something that wasn't emotionally charged, just the chance to run around and stretch himself to his physical limits—not that that was anything impressive, after his confinement by Ellyaugh—and spend some time with Quatre, Trowa and even Wufei.

He shook his head, his heavy brown braid flailing with the motion. He needed something to get last night's dream out of his head, anyways.

oOo

Duo was starting to actually feel pretty good as he thumped into his seat at the dinner table. Heero had already been there, waiting; Duo had been a few minutes late. He'd realized he'd needed to wash, after the game had finished (Trowa had won, to Wufei's disgust) and he'd cut things a bit close.

"Hey, Heero," he said in greeting, looking under the cover of a dish near him. He was _starving_. Nightmares could really take it out of you, apparently. Especially when they meant that you couldn't eat anything for a few meals, because the memories were making you nauseous.

There was silence, but that wasn't unusual. Duo let it be, and started eating.

Heero spoke up suddenly after a few long, quiet, minutes. "Duo," he said, sounding almost hesitant.

"Yeh?"

"Tell me more about the plague."

Duo froze, face tilted down so it was hidden in shadow. Heero was reminded strongly by the split-second flash of… _something_ that had flowed across Duo's face when Heero had first asked about the plague. "I already told you most of it—it devastated everything, and went after people with power, and fucked things up nine ways from Sunday. What more do you want to know?" His voice was steely with forced casualty.

Heero's slight frown deepened into a scowl, his features making the expression even more threatening. "That's not all. What happened to _you_ during the plague?" he said.

Duo stilled entirely, unnaturally so. It was even more eerie compared to his near-constant movement and fidgeting most of the time. He raised his face to meet Heero's eyes, face immobile and cold as a carved statue. There was the glint of something dangerous in the back of his eyes, and even Heero half-wanted to listen to that threat and back down.

"What makes you say that?" said Duo, voice careful and ice-cold. His tone said clearly that he had a guess.

"I—overheard you, last night," said Heero finally, rising to the challenge in that tone.

Duo stiffened visibly, eyes sparking violet-blue. "Do you have any concept of privacy?" he ground out, tone dark with rage.

"And does it mean nothing to you, that you are a _guest_ in my castle?" replied Heero, hackles bristling despite himself.

"You will never understand what I have been through," hissed Duo, "and I don't particularly care. You will never _know_ what I have been through, because I see no reason to tell you and now I know better than to assume I have anything resembling privacy here." He slowly rose to his feet, fists clenched with fury. "What you've been through sounds like Hell, but—" Duo suddenly cut himself off, taking several deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself down, although he kept his eyes carefully open and focused on Heero.

Briskly, Duo strode off towards the door. Heero made no move to follow him.

He struggled with the door for a few minutes, but it refused to open. With a shout compounded of frustration and rage and bone-deep pain he punched hard at the door's surface, ignoring the blood that welled from it as he pulled his hand away.

"Ask it," he snarled, and even Heero knew that he had overstepped his boundaries.

"Will you marry me?" he asked, quietly.

"_No_," spit out Duo, then ran away through the now-opened doors.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BetaNote: I think she's doing a pretty good job so please show your support and review. It might encourage her to write faster. LadyFrissell


	9. Chapter 9

**Lovely**  
**Chapter Nine**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of the characters, settings or events it portrays. I also do not own the story Beauty and the Beast.

**Author's Notes**: Heero is an angstbunny.

As always, thank you to my wonderful beta, **LadyFriselle**.

oOoOoOo

It had been a long time since he'd felt it, but Heero could still remember the blood-in-the-back-of-your-throat taste of regret.

For once, he really _hadn't_ meant to… offend. He hadn't meant to drive Duo away. Again.

_If Duo was falling in love with anyone in the castle, it was Quatre. It certainly wasn't him. When you loved someone… When you loved someone, you wanted to tell them things. You wanted to confide in them. You at least were willing to._

_You didn't listen in on their personal confessions to a third party, someone they _trusted_, someone they maybe loved, platonically or otherwise, and then flaunt that in their faces._

_When you loved someone…_

And he really, truly, hadn't meant for that to happen. For Duo to be so upset, so angry, so _hurt._ He'd never really wanted _any_ of it to happen, not after that first week or so, when he'd still been adjusting to Duo. But past that? He'd never meant for Duo to snap at him and stop talking. (He hadn't thought that his behavior would grate that badly. Stupid. He should have…) He'd never meant for Quatre to collapse (all because of him) or for Duo to attack him for that. (It was all the curse's fault; if it wasn't for spell, he'd be been dead ten times over by now. But whose fault was the curse? His own. He'd never been good with people, he _knew_ that. He wasn't who he used to be, the person who would turn someone away from his door in the middle of a winter storm—if anyone ever came to his door, now—but there was still too much of that person mixed up in him. _Monster_.)

He'd never meant to do _this_. But he had, hadn't he? He'd just caught bits and pieces, standing outside the window, and… He shouldn't have. He should have moved on as soon as Quatre had arrived. Quatre knew how to make things _right_. Quatre knew how to comfort. He… Did not. He didn't even know how to learn about someone who was supposed to be falling in love with him (_impossible_) without ruining whatever good he had managed to do. And that wasn't much: he had talked to Quatre when Duo had forced him too. That hadn't been the disaster everything else had been. Except for a few—very few—dinners that weren't actively disastrous, that was all.

_He would live here forever, because he was a monster. The witch-woman that had cursed him knew that: _Monster. And so... I give you a chance to break the curse. Find someone who will love you unconditionally, no matter how you look, and it will disappear. Maybe that's even worse than the curse, hm? I know how you think, Monster. Infant. Beast-child. When you've hardened your heart to keep it from hurting so long that it's festered and died, then I will come for you. _And it had taken fifty years for the servants to die, and after that it was merely eternity._

_She had known that it wasn't only appearance that would keep people away. She _knew_ that he would never become too much more than what he had already been. She had understood that he would chase away anyone insightful, kind or caring enough to look past his form. If there was such a person—and there might not be._

He would have to sit down to dinner with Duo again tonight. Unless the curse had let up, and he had been forced—allowed—to leave. It was only a matter of time, with how things had been going. But until then, he would eat dinner with Duo _every_ night.

At least now he knew better than to speak. If Duo spoke to him—if Duo was still speaking to him at all—he could make an effort (more than he usually did) to respond nicely. To respond _normally_. He could _try_, now that he'd overstepped boundaries even he had seen, and ignored. Now that it was too late.

Not that Duo would speak to him. Duo had already tried. Heero had responded. _And that was the problem…_

And in six hours the two of them would sit down to dinner together. Because that was how you got to know people you might, eventually, come to love.

oOo

Heero was early to dinner, and Duo was late.

He was subdued as he entered the dining hall, deathly quiet except for the near-silent whisper of Heero's breath, though resentment still shone in his eyes. Heero felt something roil in his stomach, a tendril of guilt and anger and something he could taste in the back of his throat, heavy as the taste of magic, but couldn't name.

Without saying a word, Duo sat and started eating. As always, Heero simply sat. Some days, he watched Duo, but today his gaze was carefully turned away, down and to the side. A candle guttered then extinguished itself, drowning in a pool of wax, the little flicker enough to attract the lord's gaze. He watched as a twisting, looping thread of smoke rose from the still-smoldering wick. It seemed to keep on burning—just barely, even the faintest red-orange glow gone—for far longer than it should have.

When he looked up, Duo's flat gaze was leveled at him across the table, his knife and fork crossed across his plate in a clear hint.

"I'm sorry," Heero said roughly, voice deeper than normal with a combination of pent-up emotion and disuse.

Duo stilled suddenly, gaze shifting into something less easily identifiable. Heero had shocked him, even if he hadn't surprised him.

"I'm glad you realize that there was _possibly_ something wrong with your actions," said Duo, voice cutting and sharp. Heero bit back the instinct to back away, even a little, to even twitch back, to show any sort of reaction—that would be showing a weakness, admitting to failure, offering up a weakness on a silver plate.

This time it was Heero's turn to stand sharply, and he didn't miss Duo's sudden flinch backwards, even in the dim half-light of the hall. His eyes weren't human, and didn't have a human eye's limitations. Again there was that tight curl of emotion in his stomach, but this time it almost _hurt_.

Carefully, slowly and cautiously, he walked around the long dining-hall table, taking the long side, so he didn't come too close to Duo. He paused at the hall doors. "Will you marry me?" he said, and he was thankful that his voice was flat and emotionless for the first time since he had been eight years old and reporting to his father the death of his first hunting dog.

"No," said Duo, and Heero left before he could say anything more.

oOo

The bitter humor of how the situation had reversed was not lost on Heero. It seemed that they were now incapable of having a dinner without one of them or the other storming from the dining hall, offended and hurt.

Of course, it served him right, for letting his guard down like that. The situation was simply the natural consequence of believing that Duo's (excellent) façade of indifference to his physical appearance was the reality of the situation. He should have known better, especially after he had proven—so effectively—that he was excellent at creating masks, at hiding, the first time the two had sat down together to eat.

And he should have known better than to make any action that could be interpreted as threatening when he looked the way he did. No matter how relaxed Duo seemed to be around him.

No human—other than maybe Wufei, and he had had 500 years of daily appearances to grind the edge off of his fear—would ever be comfortable around him. He was a _predator_: you could see it in the claws that graced his 'hands,' his paws, and in his teeth, made for cutting and tearing. Even his eyes, and the way they were set into his head. He was bigger, stronger, faster, and more lethal than any _human_ could ever hope to be. _More a gift than a curse. Monster._

He _knew_ that. He'd known it for four hundred and thirty years of 'visitors.' Known it in the seventy years of frantic and half-crazed servants before that.

But it looked like he'd forgotten. Until he'd been reminded.

It was for the best. His curse wasn't something he could afford to forget.

_And he'd been trying to _apologize_. Because he _had_ overstepped his boundaries. Duo hadn't wanted to hear it, but it still… ached, somehow. It shouldn't have. But it didn't matter; Duo would be gone soon, the way this was going. The curse and the castle had sent people away for far less conflict than this; it was only a matter of time…_

_It had to be._

oOo

Duo was honestly surprised, because he was pretty sure that that emotion he'd seen in Heero's eyes as he'd scrambled (metaphorically speaking) for the door was _hurt_. But that didn't make any kind of sense at _all_.

He hadn't really _meant_ to flinch. It was just that Heero was very, very big and very, very deadly, and he wasn't, particularly. Sure, he could cause a fair bit of damage if he put his mind to it, but he wouldn't last long in a fight with an ordinarily strong person. And Heero was far above excellent. Forget 'ordinary.' And he had had a dangerous sort of look in his eyes, and Duo had just (again, metaphorically speaking) spit in his face when he tried to apologize, and he didn't strike Duo as particularly stable at the best of times.

Really, he felt kind of bad about the apology thing, actually. It really hadn't sounded like he was used to giving them out. Not that Duo had been all _that_ out of line, really, considering what Heero had done to him. Assuming he had been assuming anything at all, Heero shouldn't have assumed that an apology would make things all better again, a sibling's kiss on a scraped knee to make everything okay.

But anyways… He had _hurt_ Heero by showing that natural fear. What did that mean?

…he hadn't known that Heero had cared at all. He still didn't have the slightest clue of what Heero cared _about_ (was it his appearance, or Duo's reaction to his appearance? Was it that Duo clearly didn't trust him? He didn't think it was something else, but it might be…) but he knew that it was there, now.

He didn't know. He didn't know a lot of things, but these were the sort of things that _mattered_. It meant he couldn't figure out what to do.

…What to do about the situation, at least. He knew what he was going to do: he was going to go run around in the gardens, even though it was fully dark by now. He needed to _move_ again.

oOo

Heero had sat silently where he was, crouched in a slight pocket of night garden, as Duo had run past it three or four times, bathed in sweat and breathing hard but still keeping determinedly at it.

He couldn't see him now, but he knew where he was: three right turns down, on a small bench. He could feel it in the castle.

oOo

Duo's breathing slowed as he lay sprawled on the bench. His mind had been blissfully empty for his run (except for thoughts like 'Oh shit! A rock!') but now all his problems were trickling back into his head.

He didn't know what Heero had reacted to, only that he had reacted. He didn't know what the rest of his apology—if there was anymore to it—would have been if things hadn't gone as they had. He didn't know what Heero was feeling. Hell, he didn't even know what _he_ was feeling.

Well, he knew some of what he was feeling. He was incensed, outraged, that Heero had listened in on him and Quatre. (Was he betrayed by that breach of privacy? That would require that he had trusted him, at least a little, in the first place…) And he knew that he was still shaken from the dream, the nightmare, itself, and from all the memories it had brought to the surface. He knew that really liked Quatre, felt vaguely protective of him, and thought that Quatre felt somewhat close to the same. He honestly liked Trowa, who had a truly wicked sense of humor, and Wufei was growing on him, though the friendly-rivals-grudge thing they had going on was a bit difficult to navigate sometimes.

He supposed he liked Heero, that he wasn't sure _why_. He'd done nothing but be rude, difficult, down-right insulting and nasty since he'd met him.

…but sometimes he was merely socially awkward, and sometimes it seemed like he was trying, and sometimes things felt almost friendly.

He had started to relax around him.

Duo shivered, and shifted out of his boneless sprawl into a heat-conserving huddle. The cooling sweat was wicking away whatever heat he had, and the night was chillingly cold, although the day had been hot—considerably hotter than Duo liked it, although Quatre had said that it reminded him of home.

He sighed and buried his face in his knees. There were a few minutes of peace.

Duo's face whipped up as he caught the shifting noises of feet on loose gravel. He looked wearily at the person, the creature, facing him. "Heero," he said, voice wary.

Heero nodded in recognition of the greeting, then realized that Duo probably couldn't see it, in this lighting. "Hello," he said simply, not sure of what else to say. (He wanted to say things he didn't know yet, wanted to say things he hadn't figured out for himself. He didn't really want to say anything at all… He wasn't even sure why he was there at all.)

After a few minutes, he realized that he was standing over the much-smaller and sitting boy, looming over him. There was room on the bench next to Duo, but he wouldn't force him to sit next to him like that. He looked uselessly around, then simply crouched on the gravel path. Duo swallowed nervously at the inhuman motions his different structure made possible, the movement made more threatening by the near-total dark and the glint of what little light there was from Heero's eyes.

There was more silence, Duo still curled into the defensive huddle that had tightened at Heero's sudden appearance.

"When I was first placed under this curse," he said, abruptly. "People began to grow crazy as the other servants began to die. By 20 years it was clear that neither Wufei nor I were aging.

"Nothing scared the servants more than I did. I—I wasn't a kind master, before the change, and I isolated myself totally for the first six months I was like—this. And they started trying to kill me…

"I accepted that. But then…

"My mother had died in childbirth. A girl, the daughter of one of the peasants, probably no older than 12 when I was born, was put in charge of me. My father was… very busy, running the castle, and never had time for anything more than my education in matters of ruling and behavior. She was the one almost solely responsible for raising me.

"And then—after the curse—she tried to kill me. She brought me my meals, and had, even for the five years when I almost never left my own quarters in the palace. I could smell the poison in it, and when I told her she—

_had snapped, started screaming at him. 'Monster! Inhuman beast! You disgust me! I treated you like my _child_! I _raised_ you! And now… Now…! I will never have a child of my own, _my lord_, because I would rip the unborn child from my own womb rather than bring him into this half-existence you've forced us into—'_

"…It was eventually revealed that she had tried to kill me herself."

Heero swallowed once and then again, throat choked with tears he couldn't shed anymore.

"Why are you telling me this?" said Duo hesitantly after another long, silent pause.

"What I overhead was—not meant to be heard by me. I'm sorry. This is all I can do to try to make things even." He shrugged, then bit back a growl when he realized, again, that Duo couldn't see at all what he could see easily.

"Thank you," said Duo slowly. He curled tighter, but it was against the cold and not emotion, and the shiver that ran down his spine wasn't from the quickly-choked-off beginnings of a growl that had escaped Heero's throat. The bench he was sitting on, solid stone, had lost the heat it had picked up during the day, turning to what felt like ice against the bare skin of his palms. "I'm—I suppose I'm sorry too. I probably owe you one on general principal. You didn't—The Plague's kind of an issue with me. It's… More than private. But yeah, I think it's going to be okay. And I probably owe you an apology on general principal."

Again, silence fell, although it felt more companionable.

Duo's teeth started chattering. "H—Heero?" he said. "I gotta get back to the castle. It's _cold_ out here."

Heero snapped out a curse and stood swiftly, hackles bristling slightly and a growl building in the back of his throat. He needed to _remember_ things like how his vision had changed, and how much warmer a fur coat was than human skin, even covered in clothing.

"Uh… Heero?" said Duo, sounding slightly unnerved. "Something wrong? 'Cause, uh, I didn't mean to be insulting or anything, this time around…"

He hadn't flinched, even when Heero had fluidly snapped back to a standing position.

"No, it's nothing," said Heero shortly, trying to calm himself down. It didn't seem to calm Duo down all that much. He tried again. "I—forget, what it's like to be human," he said, stiffly.

"No problem. It's my fault, really, for running around in the middle of the night without enough clothes. I just want to start heading back…"

Duo took a few steps down the path, then turned to look back at the still-standing Heero. He cocked his head in a clearly questioning look.

"Would… you rather I walk ahead or behind you?" Heero said, softly. "If I—frighten you. There's not much I can do…"

Duo looked at him appraisingly, and Heero missed the slight apprehension in his glance. He took the few steps back and tucked himself under Heero's arm, against his side. "Mmm. Much better. You're very warm, you know that?"

Heero couldn't seem to manage much resembling a coherent sentence.

Duo slid away a little. "I'm sorry," he said, frowning. "I always tend to forget that not everyone has my own personal space boundaries. It's just… I suppose we _are,_ kinda not really sorta, dating, in a way, and… You know? Never mind…"

"No, I don't _mind_," said Heero and then cursed himself soundly (thankfully internally) for coming up with something so _stupid_ to say. He had felt Duo's body shivering against his own; it was far too cold for him, with no body fat to hold in heat and far too few clothes. "If it is a matter of your comfort."

"Okay, then," said Duo, shifting back to his original position. "It really _is_ cold out—this helps."

The two started off down the path, their movements a little choppy as the two got used to being so close to one another. Heero had to concentrate on keeping his strides short and slow, to adjust for the length of Duo's legs. Duo had to keep from walking into bushes.

The two slid apart as they entered the castle entrance, no longer sharing heat. "Thank you," said Duo again, voice slightly awkward. "I'll see you at dinner tomorrow, I guess."

"Yes," said Heero slowly. "Good night."

"Good night."

--End Chapter 9--


	10. Chapter 10

**Lovely**  
**Chapter Ten**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gundam Wing. I merely play.

**Author's Notes**: My Goal For This Chapter: short and sweet.

…Yeah. I ended up with more plot coming out of nowhere and blindsiding me. Lovely. (…pun totally unintended. No, seriously.)

Many, many thanks to my incredible beta, **LadyFriselle**. She's fantastic!

And huge thanks (along with a healthy dose of OMG, _really?_) to **Gami1x2**, who drew me _fanart._ It's been a long long time, but I am still in a gleeful, happy daze about it. _There are not words for awesome this is._ (Gami, would you mind if I posted the link around like crazy, so other people can revel in the sheer awesome of what you drew?)

oOoOoOo

Love at the lips was touch  
As sweet as I could bear;  
And once that seemed too much;  
I lived on air.

--from "To Earthward," by Robert Frost

oOoOoOo

Something in the air had changed, Duo thought. It was starting to feel more comfortable, oddly enough, around the castle, even in the huge, echoing vaults of the dining hall, the main one.

He was starting to talk with Heero, talk _comfortably_ with Heero, while they ate dinner. That was the key word—comfortable.

Something had changed, or maybe broken, and he liked the difference. He was starting to feel like he had a home again. And his homes had always been people, instead of places.

oOo

"Hey, Heero! Great to see you," said Duo. He was always enthusiastic when he greeted someone, but he didn't always mean it. He did, this time, and he did most of the time, now.

Heero nodded stiffly and his lips curved, just slightly, into something that could almost be a slight smile. His own greetings had warmed considerably, when it came to Duo.

Something had changed.

Heero had accidentally hurt Duo, and Duo had hurt him back, and Heero had apologized, and meant it, and shared his own painful memories to help right the imbalance. And Duo had accepted.

And they had walked side-by-side into the castle, huddled against each other, human body tucked close against inhuman one, heavy claws brushing against delicate, fragile skin and longer legs forced to slow, and both of them nearly afraid and just as much something else.

They hadn't really touched each other since. It wasn't noticeable, not all the time, because they'd never touched each other before, either. But they could tell.

When they accidentally brushed against each other, they could tell. And when there was the opportunity for one to reach out, even just to lightly touch a hand to a shoulder to make the other turn or pay attention, they didn't, but they both recognized the opportunity.

And they talked. They hadn't, before.

So Duo could mean it when he greeted the other. Heero noticed—he could hear the slight difference, and it was nearly obvious, now that he was getting to know him, and he knew his own greeting was friendly. Maybe something more. He didn't know, didn't know if Duo knew, if anyone knew. If there was anything to know.

"It's good to see you," Duo continued. "It's been a few days—excluding dinner, of course, but you knew that, didn't you? Hey, want to do something today?"

Heero sighed. "It's raining," he pointed out, because 'doing something' invariably meant being outside. Duo liked to be in outdoors as much as he could, Heero knew by now—a side effect of years of imprisonment. He hadn't escaped unscathed, even though he'd never been beaten that badly, really.

"No, Heero, it's not raining," said Duo, sounding amused and affecting a lecturing sort of tone. "Rain implies things like 'raindrops' and that means space between the various little bits of water. …As opposed to this, which is a vertical river. Covering the entirety of the grounds and then some. What it is doing is not 'raining.' Pouring, maybe, or sheeting, or flooding…"

Heero made a faint noise of amusement. Bright violet-blue eyes turned to look at him happily.

"But we could go_exploring!_" he finished. "Inside, at least. I still haven't seen most of the castle. This is a _damn_ big place you've got here, you know."

Heero looked at his friend—at his friend, at the person his curse, his mistake, had imprisoned, at the person who was here in case he would say 'yes' when Heero asked him if he would marry him, at the boy he might someday love and who might someday love him back, and that was startlingly real-feeling, now, more possible seeming than it had been with anyone else, ever before; Duo had stopped flinching when he unexpectedly found Heero around a corner or when he was suddenly looming out at him from what had been empty shadow a minute before; Duo had stopped having even the slightest reaction, or having any carefully managed non-reaction.

Heero looked at his friend warily. He did like spending time with Duo, more than he liked to admit. He had started actively seeking him out, outside of the hour or so they spent eating together every evening. But there was a big difference between enjoying his company and enjoying the incredible amounts of trouble Duo seemed to attract. It was like metal filings to a magnet.

"Awww, don't be like that," said Duo, mock-pouting, a slightly wicked glint in his otherwise guileless eyes. "You know I'd get lost and devoured by dust bunnies without someone along to help me."

Heero sighed, but he knew Duo's heart was set on doing this, now, and while he might not be devoured by animated dust animals, he _was_ the sort to end up falling in one of the siege wells, or falling through a rotten board and breaking his leg, or probably any number of disasters he couldn't think of, because nobody would come across them under normal circumstances. Unless they were Duo.

"Fine," he said, voice slightly testy, but he thought—although he wasn't sure, and he wasn't sure what it meant—that Duo could hear his interest (because Duo was, invariably, no matter what else you said of him,_interesting_) and his lack of sureness and his slight, careful concern.

Duo whooped loudly. "Yes! There's nothing else to do, and Trowa, Quat and Wufei are being _boring_—" Heero translated that to mean that they were going over the records the castle had; Quatre loved looking back at the politics—his own family had records just as old and nearly as biased, although in the other direction—and Wufei was happy to show them to him. Trowa stayed around for the chance to give his opinions as to what those decisions must have been to the rank-and-file. "—so I was really hoping you'd be willing to do something. Some things just aren't as good on your own."

Heero felt a slight twinge of guilt, and forcefully shook it away. It was ridiculous. He didn't owe Duo his time, and gave a considerable portion of it to him anyways—with dinner and checking in at least once or twice a day and other things, he spent more time with Duo than he did with anyone else, than he had with anyone else since…

Since before he could remember. He'd never had friends, really, although he'd had a few playmates when he'd been very young.

"Let's go!" said Duo, bouncing just a little on the balls of his feet, wide smile spread across his face. Heero forced away a half-formed comparison to the sun on a half-cloudy, wind-blown day.

"Where?" said Heero dryly. Duo made a face at him.

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in that you know what I'm doing and I don't…"

"What _we're_ doing," corrected Heero, and that little reminder that he was doing this, too, somehow meant a lot.

oOo

Duo shivered, just slightly. It was cold where they were, in the very deepest depths of the castle, the floor beneath the basements, hewn right into the earth, and he hadn't worn enough clothes. It had been one of those deceptively balmy days, aboveground, but the earth still had the chill of winter clinging to it—although they were deep enough that it would probably never be truly warm.

He ignored the cold in favor of poking his head into the next room down the hallway. He'd assumed it was going to be just another dusty little storage room filled with bits of potentially useful detritus someone had decided to save in favor of throwing away, but the heavy wooden door was considerably more ornate than any of the others had been; a lot of them hadn't had doors at all. There was some sort of faded gilt symbol set into the wood.

"Hey, look at this!" he called over his shoulder to Heero, who was a little ways behind him. Fascinated—he'd never been able to resist a mystery—he tried the latch. The door refused to open.

"Let me try," said Heero's voice behind him, and he moved aside—he was, pretty clearly, outclassed in terms of sheer physical strength.

The door still refused to open, even with Heero's full strength behind it—and that was enough that the thing should have broken down, even if the latch still refused to turn.

"Huh," said Duo, intrigued. There was nothing like something you couldn't look at to awaken curiosity. "And look… I wonder what this is, on the door." He brushed at the thick layer of dust and cobwebs that had covered everything down here—including himself and, especially, Heero, whose fur coat only made things worse—and then scrubbed at them harder, slowly revealing the almost-entirely-faded gilt design pressed into the half-rotten wood of the door.

It was a stylized rose, was his first thought: you saw a lot of roses worked into chairs and picture frames and tapestries and stair rails, around the castle, for some reason. His second thought, enough to make him shiver, was that it looked like magic—the little glinting half-metallic particles, forming waves as they radiated away from their source, over- and inter-lapping: the healer's fierce, hot-burning bath, or what was left before and after an illusionist started or ended his display, the raw material of pattern and design, or the bruise-colored, plague-colored tide that had filled the city and everyone in it, even though nobody had been able to see it—

Heero was tense behind him. Duo looked back at the man standing behind him, flashing him what he hoped was a cheerful grin—he didn't feel particularly like smiling, or even forcing a smile. It probably hadn't worked. Heero blinked at him, then tried to smile back—a real smile, not the little twitch of the lips he'd given him when they'd met that morning—and the sharp canines didn't even phase him anymore. They had, the first time Heero had smiled at Duo: with his face, the expression looked more like a snarl, a threat, than anything else.

And Duo knew that Heero knew that. He strongly suspected, even if he couldn't prove it, that Heero had tried to keep himself from smiling (not that he was naturally given to it, even at the best of times) around any of them: Duo, Quatre, Trowa, even Wufei. He'd made it a point to encourage smiling, after he'd realized that. And Heero did smile at him now. Not often, but often enough.

"I wonder why this is down here," said Duo finally. Something, _anything_, needed to be said. "I mean, this clearly doesn't fit in with all these other doors. I wonder if there's a reason?"

"It might have originally fit another room," said Heero. "One that got a lot of use, and was in plain view, and so it got decorated. And then it got replaced for some reason, and so they fitted it to one of these rooms down here, instead of just wasting it."

"Maybe," Duo said, shrugging. He ran his fingertips over the innermost ring of petals imprinted on the door, shivering slightly, the hair on the nape of his neck prickling. He shook his head to push away the feeling, and turned to look at Heero again.

The lord of the castle was looking considerably larger than he usually did, hair standing on end, as oddly disturbed by the door as Duo was, and Duo half-hesitated, then ran a hand briefly down Heero's arm, smoothing down the thick fur. Heero started and Duo pulled his hand away, quickly, and looked to one side—there was _something_ there between the two of them, but they didn't… Didn't act like they actually were dating, even within the odd, forced, yes-we-are-considering-each-other-as-romantic-partners-_kinda_ sort of situation they were in. They didn't _touch_ each other.

Softly, Heero ran the back of his own hand along Duo's arm, the one closest to him, mimicking the gesture, knuckles just barely brushing skin, and Duo shivered again, turning to meet Heero's eyes. They both looked away again, quickly, after their eyes locked for one quick second.

The eerie mood the mystery and the door had created was broken, though, replaced with awkwardness and unsurety. Duo let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and brushed a hand over the gilt inlay again, letting it fall to the handle again, pressing down on it again, uselessly—

_He was walking up the dripping-wet and cold—cold enough that he could see his breath—stone passageway behind the door, walking up and up the rough stairs, himself but also not himself, and somehow he could see even though there was nothing and he was walking and pulling the air of the tunnel into himself, breathing it in and out of his lungs, taking it into who he was, and then he was stepping out of the tunnel, breathing that air into the outside atmosphere—it was late evening, dusk slowly gathering—and he was in the garden, in _a_ garden, one he half-recognized, but there was a pond; it was frozen and he was looking into it, walking out onto it and spreading through it._

—The vision hit him with enough force to drive him to his knees, gasping, lungs and muscles burning, not like cold or heat but like acid had been driven through his bones. Heero was hovering over him, not quite daring to touch him, but the worry making his eyes wild, and the sheer strength of it burned the image into Duo's mind. He reached out with one hand, shaking helplessly with pain and the aftershocks of the vision, and with his deep, needy gasps for air. He needed to touch something real, needed Heero's support.

For a minute he thought that he wouldn't touch him again, and he understood that, accepted it. But then Heero was reaching out, laying one huge hand underneath Duo's arm, supporting it, and pulling himself down, on his knees to match Duo's collapsed position, not that he would, built the way he was, and then he was pulling him into an embrace, warm and too tight for comfort, almost too tight to bear, and Duo reached one shaky arm, the one that wasn't being held by him, around him in return, holding on hard, tightly enough to keep the limb from shaking with anything more than the faintest tremors.

After a minute, Heero seemed to remember his strength, remember who and what he was, and he loosened his grip so suddenly, so quickly that Duo almost let go entirely, so that his friend could have the room to push himself away. But Heero didn't let go, instead shifting his grip to something almost excruciatingly delicate: the faintest hold, barely exerting any pressure at all. Duo was half relieved—his hold had been verging on painful—and half disappointed; he needed the closeness, the reality and immediacy. He pressed himself closer instead, burying his face into Heero's clothes and the loose spill of his hair, partly to keep himself from needing to look at the person he was clinging to like a child, a distraught preteen girl.

He was relieved when Heero's arms pressed closer again, no matter how cautious he was still being—it was better than that butterfly-light too-cautious hold he'd had before. He felt his heart slow and the pain that had invaded his limbs fade to fizzing numbness, like they'd fallen asleep, and then back to something normal. He felt tired, more than exhausted, utterly wiped out, by what he'd gone through. Only the last of the adrenaline in his system kept him from dropping off to sleep right there, still clinging to Heero, both of them kneeling on the rough dirt-and-stone floor of the basement they were in, in front of the door that had caused this.

"I'm sorry," half-whispered Heero at last, voice heartbreakingly sincere and, inexplicably, afraid, as if he thought that Duo would lash out at him again. The words rumbled through Duo, the way he was pressed against him, held cradled to his chest; he shivered at the intimacy of the feeling.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Duo half-whispered back. "Only one of us insisted on going exploring."

"You are a—a guest," said Heero, voice wavering and nearly breaking, because Duo_wasn't_ a guest. He was a captive, a prisoner; he'd been torn away from the world and forced into this unreal half-existence, forced to keep company with a monster who was supposed to be courting him. "It's my duty to keep you safe in my home."

And he had failed in that duty. He didn't know what this door was, but something about it unnerved him; he feared it, or what it symbolized, or what it was holding back. Something about it was—was wrong, in the way that he was wrong; inhuman, dangerous, monstrous. A changed, warped reflection of what it should be.

"No," repeated Duo, stubbornly. "It's not your fault, Heero. I don't blame you. If I blame anyone, I blame myself, but you didn't know this was down here, did you? Whatever it is, it just didn't like me. You know how powerful magic can get—halfway to having a personality of its own, and belligerent as fuck. If it's anything, it's me—I have the worst luck, you know." Duo was relieved that Heero still couldn't see his face: he knew his expression wouldn't be—_happy_. Duo knew his luck. Heero didn't, though… And he would have blamed himself, assumed that Duo was just trying to cushion hurt feelings, even if he did know. And he didn't.

The two were silent for a long, slow moment, the only noises the slight creaks and rustlings Duo and Heero made, as they shifted slightly, trying to find more comfortable positions—nearly impossible with the way they were kneeling wrapped around each other.

After a minute, Duo sighed heavily. "You should be somewhere you can rest," Heero said before he could say anything.

"Okay," said Duo, submitting without much of an argument—it was true and some deep-down instinctual part of him knew that Heero needed to protect him like this, give him the little help he could. He tried to make it to his feet and couldn't, collapsing as he got halfway up. He spat out a curse.

"I _hate_ being so weak and helpless," he hissed through gritted teeth, glaring at nothing.

"You're not weak," said Heero quietly, and with a conviction that surprised Duo out of his frustration, making him turn to look at the other man with surprise.

"What?" he said, on automatic—he'd heard just fine, and it wasn't like it was a hard sentence to understand.

Heero shrugged, but didn't contradict his statement, or add any qualifiers. "Let me carry you," he asked instead, and he sounded almost hopeful.

"Okay," said Duo again, almost warily.

But it wasn't embarrassing, or humiliating. He hadn't been expecting that. He wasn't some swooning maiden suffering corsets for fashion's sake, and he didn't like to be treated like one, but he _wasn't_. It was… Surprising.

He felt like Heero's equal, even when he was being carried by him because he'd_collapsed_, despite the ridiculous differences between them when it came to size and strength and physical capability.

And it was—surprisingly nice, to still be touching Heero. To still be holding onto him, and to have him holding on in return.

It had been a long time since he'd really had any physical contact with another being, let alone for this long, or this closely. Never with the connotations this had—never with this situation, any of its permutations: never with a suitor, for lack of a better word; never with someone who'd held him captive, thank any listening gods; never with someone like Heero.

Never with this much—_trust_. He _trusted_ Heero, at least a little. He didn't know how much.

oOo

Duo had been asleep for hours when a persistent knocking on his door slowly dragged him back to the waking world.

"Nngh. Wh's't?" he mumbled, still exhausted. The vision, the hallucination—whatever it had been—had made him more tired than he had known it was possible to be.

"Heero," came the answer, and the lord of the castle sounded hesitant, self-conscious, too-aware of what he was doing, whatever it was.

"H'lo, Heero," Duo yawned. After a minute he added, belatedly, "Uh, you can come in, you know."

The door was pushed open carefully, and Heero padded silently into the room, looking cautious.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Tired," said Duo immediately. "But much better." Some hours of sleep had certainly helped with that. Belatedly, he glanced at the clock—nine in the evening or so. That would explain why he was so hungry; subconsciously, he placed a hand on his empty stomach.

"I'm glad," said Heero, the rote niceties coming to him automatically, but Duo could_hear_ the real emotion behind the words.

"…oh!" said Duo suddenly, after a brief second's pause, realizing why Heero must be here: it was past dinnertime. The curse required that they eat dinner together, every day; apparently illness (or the side effects of mysterious doorways, at least) wasn't any excuse. "Dinner. Of course! I'm sorry. Uh, if you'll give me a minute, I can get dressed—" _I can probably get dressed,_ he added, silently, to himself. He'd still been weak as a newly-born kitten when Heero had dropped him off in his bed, and he hadn't really tried moving since then.

Heero shook his head, expression clouded with _something_ but not anything that Duo could clearly read. "No," he said, "You should stay in bed. Rest is good for these things." It was too, Duo knew.

"But what about…?" Duo began. He knew that the castle had given him seven levels of Hell the one time he'd tried to escape his duty, but he didn't know how it would react to its lord doing the same.

"I brought dinner," said Heero abruptly, voice rough, looking determinedly to one side. "If you'll let me stay, it should be enough—" He broke off, then began again. "I don't want to impose, but the curse…"

"Its fine," said Duo automatically. "No, really—I don't mind. Thank you." It was—thoughtful, what Heero had done. It wasn't anything he had expected. "Sit down," he added, after a minute, as he continued to stand, awkward, just inside the doorway.

"None of the chairs will hold me," said Heero, finally meeting Duo's eyes. "And your own rooms don't change. You're too human. It—impedes the ability of the castle."

"Oh," said Duo. A human presence kept the castle from altering itself? What sort of fucked up spell were they _in?_ No sane—or even insane—sorcerer would set up a spell like that, one that was inimical to humanity—even if they could manage it, which was unlikely. Their own magic would have to have enough of a human presence that it would cancel out the spell… The possible implications of what that made the caster was unnerving. "Well, the bed's big enough, if I move to one side. You can't just stand there while I eat, anyways."

"Are you sure?" half-blurted Heero, looking surprised.

"What?" said Duo, looking at him. His tone was casually amused, but there was real worry in his eyes, he was afraid—what there was between the two of them was so _fragile_. More than delicate: not just going to shatter at a fingertip poking too hard, but going to crack and crumble away into nothing with even too strong a breath. Had he accidentally said something, done something, that would send Heero shying away again, just when he'd thought that the barrier of touch had been breached (and he _liked_ the contact, maybe even more than he knew, more than he was willing to confess to himself) or had Heero just decided on his own that he didn't want to—to do what it was that they were doing, when Heero hugged Duo and Duo clung back, and when Heero carried him back up the stairs, and when Heero hugged Duo to his side to keep away the evening cold. Had he been imagining that Heero was as aware of their touch as he was? Had it really been just necessary contact, to him, when he'd supported him after the vision, and then carried him back up to his room?

He couldn't see any of that in Heero, but he supposed that that didn't mean much. He'd thought that he'd had the man pinned, but he'd been wrong, repeatedly.

"You don't owe me anything," said Heero, voice low, still standing by the door.

"What?" said Duo again, and this time there was no calculation behind the word—it was an honest, automatic question

"You don't need to, to force yourself," said Heero, still quiet. "You don't need to give me anything, because you think you owe me or because of—whatever. You don't need to take the 'reason' for your imprisonment here seriously. It's mor—It's enough that we're friends," and he hesitated on the final word, as if hesitant to assume even that much of a relationship. "You don't need to indulge the deluded whims of the spell, and force yourself to be receptive, responsive, to what's been forced on you."

Duo was, honestly, at a loss for words.

Well, he did have a few things to say. They were just going to be incredibly embarrassing, if he said them.

Oh well. "No," he said, "I'm not forcing myself. It's—I don't mind. I like—" he paused. "I like getting to know you. It's been a long time since I've had friends," and he smiled up at Heero. "And I'm not… I like the, the—Goddamnit, I'm not 'indulging'_any_thing, I'm just doing, I don't know what! I _like_ touchi—being near you!" Sure enough, he was blushing. Heero looked startled at his outburst and maybe—hopefully?—happy with it.

There was a long pause.

"Just sit down and let me eat," said Duo at last, voice sour. Thankfully, Heero seemed to be getting to know his moods well enough to not take it personally, because it _wasn't_ personal. He scooted over in the bed, leaving a space for the larger man to sit down.

Heero didn't follow Duo's order to sit immediately, instead handing Duo a plate of food, which he accepted thankfully if not really graciously.

There were a few minutes of silence as Duo ate and Heero sat, awkwardly, on the edge of the bed. If his hand happened to fall close enough to Duo that his own hand sometimes brushed it, neither of the two mentioned it.

Finally, Duo paused in his meal long enough to speak. "…Why don't you ever eat with me?" he asked, the question bursting out of him with the sort of curiosity that spoke of something that had been kept reined in for quite some time.

Heero turned his head away again, hiding his face, and Duo felt a brief spark of worry.

"I— can't eat normally anymore," he said. "My mouth, the shape of my head, won't allow it. I eat in private."

"I wouldn't mind," said Duo, voice open and honest.

"No," said Heero flatly. There was something delicate in his voice, under the hard metal of his refusal. Duo listened.

"Okay," he said at last, his words only a temporary retreat, although he wasn't sure if Heero realized that.

…it just didn't seem fair, to make someone eat five hundred years' worth of meals alone.

--end chapter 11--


	11. Chapter 11

**Lovely****  
Chapter Eleven**  
By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of the characters or events taken from it for this story.

**Author's Notes**: Sorry! It's taken me _forever,_ I know… Don't worry. There are **no** plans to abandon this story. It might take me a while to finish it up, but I am definitely going to get there. Three chapters to go!

Many, many thanks to my beta, **LadyFriselle**. She never fails to astound me!

oOoOoOo

Duo looked up from his dinner unexpectedly enough to surprise Heero, who had been watching him—closely, he forced himself to admit. He hadn't expected Duo to almost catch him doing so.

"So, Heero—what _do_ you eat?"

That was… Unexpected. A lot of what Duo did was. It was a new experience for Heero.

"Meat," he said dispassionately. He wasn't going to add that it needed to be raw meat—it was the full truth, and an important detail, but…

But some part of him didn't want to scare Duo away. Which was too easy for him to do, the way he was.

"So if, say, I were to feed you a bit of this, there would be no problems? Hypothetically speaking, of course."

"Technically, yes." Now Heero was downright wary, and suspicious. He could see where this was going.

"Great. Hey, Hero, want to try a bit of this really excellent beef?" Duo smiled a dazzling smile and held up his fork, a chunk of meat speared on it.

"My jaws prevent me from being able to eat normally," Heero replied quietly, looking away.

"Heero, seriously—I don't care. You could cough up your stomach and envelop live birds to be slowly digested whole, for all I care." He paused. "…Okay, that might actually be kind of gross. Anything up to that point, though."

"Fine," Heero said shortly, standing abruptly. He stalked around the end of the table, coming to stand behind Duo's chair, reaching one arm around to pick up one of his unused forks—the table was always set for a formal dinner, and Duo always insisted on only using one of the six or seven forks provided—and speared a piece of meat. He slid it into his mouth, the fork feeling light, foreign and unwieldy in his hands (it had been four hundred years since he'd used one, or tried to) chewed and swallowed.

"See? No problem whatsoever. How was it?"

"Good," said Heero, voice neutral. He was lying through his teeth.

"Great! Now have another bite."

"Why are you feeding me?" He told himself he wasn't stalling.

"Because I'm sick of eating dinner alone every night. Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to watch someone eat?"

"I think that etiquette rule is supposed to work the other way around—"

"Whatever."

"—It wouldn't be a problem if this wasn't required by the curse. You could eat with Wufei, Quatre and Trowa."

"I want your company, Heero—it's just, I'd like you to feel comfortable enough to eat, too. –I _like_ dinner with you, requirement of the curse or not, now that I'm being less stupid and you're being less of an ass. So come on, eat—there's tons more here than what I need, even if it's not a full meal for you. You could just eat a _little_."

Heero looked away, even though his friend couldn't see him, the way he was standing behind him. He was out of excuses and—and he owed Duo the truth. "—I can only eat raw meat." There was no immediate verbal result, which just wasn't _normal_ for Duo. He tried to ignore the way his heart stung, sharply. He _knew_ that Duo wasn't going to be the one to break the curse, because nobody was—the whole thing was a sham, an act, some charade he moved through because he had to cling to whatever hope he had, even if it was false hope—

He hadn't honestly believed that Duo would come to love him. It was just that he was the only one of his 'guests' that Heero had ever truly liked, had become _friends_ with.

Heero forced himself to look back at Duo. He'd turned himself around so he was kneeling in the seat of his chair, facing backwards and looking up, and he met Heero's gaze unflinchingly.

"Seriously? So what did you mean when you said that meat—_cooked_ meat—you just ate was good?"

"It was a lie."

Duo scowled suddenly. "Damn it, Heero—"

He sounded disappointed and angry instead of disgusted, furious. "What?" Heero couldn't keep the surprise from his voice.

"Why didn't you _tell_ me? I mean, it's not like it's even something that matters! If you didn't like it, just say so—"

"I—" He didn't _have_ a good reason. He didn't know why…

"What?" Duo's tone was hard, set: he wasn't going to budge an inch.

"Cooked meat is something normal people eat. Something _humans_ eat. Raw meat is for… Wolves, lions, other beasts. For _monsters_."

"Heero—you're human in all the ways that matter."

His lip curled in disbelief, and he looked away again. Duo stood in his chair so they were closer to the same height, and placed a hand on either side of his head, turning it until Heero was looking at him again, his eyes wide with some emotion—shock, Duo thought. "Do you want to eat me?"

He looked repulsed, and hurt. "No—!"

"Well, then, clearly you're more human than you seem to think. And raw meat… That's kind of weird, honestly, but it's just who you are. It's not an issue."

Heero didn't believe him, Duo realized, his stomach twisting a little with the thought. It hurt.

"I would like to avoid giving offense. And no matter how… Tolerant you are, I don't want to offend you. I would eat like a _human_ if I could, but my… I can't, I'm physically unable to handle it—"

"Damn it, Heero, you aren't going to offend me! Unless you keep on assuming I'm some sort of cold-hearted bastard who can't overlook weird eating habits in my closest friend! So you eat raw meat—so what? It _doesn't matter!_"

"I don't mind, and I don't run the risk of offending anyone when I eat alone—"

"But you _shouldn't have to,_ damn it!"

"I don't _mind_, which you would know if you _listened_—"

"You should mind," Duo said, tone suddenly quiet again, the anger draining out of his voice. "Do you eat in front of Wufei?"

"No—and _he_ knows that when I say I prefer it—"

"Wufei is a great guy and all, but he doesn't know when to yell at you until you get some sense into your damn fool head."

Heero glared, offended.

"…Don't look at me like that, you know it's true." Duo realized, suddenly, that he was still resting his arms on Heero's shoulders, although he'd relaxed his grip—it was almost a loose hug. He… Really didn't want to move them, even though he should. He sunk his fingers into the thick fur instead: it was warm with the heat radiating from Heero's body, the difference striking in the unchanging chill of the dining hall they ate in. "Please. Just… Think it through."

His breath caught as Heero suddenly reached out, arms a blur, to wrap him into a desperate hug almost too tight to be comfortable. He wriggled his own arms into a more comfortable position, buried his fingers into Heero's fur, head pressed against one shoulder—he could hear the steady rhythm of Heero's heart, slower than a human's would be, and feel his breath, hot and intimate against his ear and moving in and out of the broad, muscular chest he was pressed against.

Heero tried to let go and move back. Duo tightened his grip. He wasn't going to let him back off now, and pretend that it had never happened. After a second, Heero put his arms around him again, lightly and hesitantly, and Duo relaxed into the embrace.

They broke apart a minute or two later, and Duo was smiling widely, face glowing—he looked so happy that Heero smiled back before he could stop himself. Duo didn't even flinch at the way that bared canines the size of his fingers, teeth designed for ripping and tearing flesh, still just inches away from his face.

"Fine," Heero almost-whispered. "I'll… Think about it."

oOo

It was the first truly summer-like day they'd had, to Duo's great delight. The only downside was that it was the middle of the afternoon, and he hadn't seen Heero all day. …He _always_ saw him at dinner, of course, but for the past few weeks, maybe as long as a month, he'd spent at least an hour with Heero outside of dinner, and usually more…

He enjoyed the time he spent with the castle's lord.

So he was looking for him. …He hoped Heero wouldn't mind, if he did find him. And he felt kind of stupid doing it—he could amuse himself for a single _day_ without needing to go searching for the other man, he wasn't _dependent_—

But he was still doing it. Because he really _did_ want to see Heero, especially to enjoy the sun—the way the weather was here, it could snow tomorrow, even though it was hot enough today that he was sweating—in fact, they'd had hail and slush the day before, and spring squalls the day before that. It was kind of fun, Duo thought—he'd had a distinct lack of weather during his years of imprisonment, and this helped make up for it.

So, where _was_ Heero?

If he didn't want to be found, Duo wouldn't find him. The castle knew its master, and tended to rearrange itself, subtly, depending on what Heero needed. But if he didn't care, then there was a chance—

He'd already checked the obvious places, like the library and the reading room, Heero's study, the practice grounds. Now he had no idea where he was...

No, wait, that was the dining hall. He wasn't lost after all.

And checking out the dining room was worth a shot—maybe he'd finally catch Heero eating!

Anyone else probably would have missed Heero, sprawled on the cold stone floor of the dark room a ways down its length, but Duo had always had sharp eyes. He felt worry spark inside him at the sight—what was Heero doing laying on the floor of the dining hall during the middle of the day? Was he sick, or hurt?

"Heero?" he asked, hurrying (why was he so _worried_ about him?) towards the still figure. "Heero? Are you—Are you okay?" He knelt, placing a hand to Heero's side.

"Hnnng…"

"_Heero?_"

"—Duo? What?"

"_Are you okay?_"

"—Yes. Of course. What are you doing here?"

"—Damn it!"

"What?"

"I was _worried_ about you! Why are you laying on the floor, out cold?"

"…The floor's cold," Heero said, as if his meaning should be obvious.

"What?"

Heero harshly pulled a clawed hand through his thick mane of hair—or fur, Duo wasn't sure what to call it. "The… _changes_ have given me trouble with the heat. I'm… I am physically adapted for an extremely cold environment."

Oh. That made sense. "Oh, _good_. I was worried—I'm not used to finding you unconscious."

"What _are_ you doing here?"

"I was looking for you!"

Heero smiled, still looking somewhat sleepy, up at him and Duo ignored the way that made his stomach twist, flopping down to the floor to distract himself. His smiles meant more, because they almost never appeared—partly the fault of his personality, and partly because of Heero's damn stubbornness and sheer beat-your-head-against-the-wall _denseness_ and stupidity when it came to what he looked like. Who he was.

Hell, Duo barely noticed it anymore. It was just _Heero_.

It really was colder in here—and Duo was no expert, but it seemed a bit _too_ pronounced to be a matter of thick, insulating stone walls over a cellar.

Maybe it was the castle, adjusting for Heero.

Either way, Duo was suddenly glad that there was a fire in the huge, gaping fireplace every evening when he met Heero. It made a huge difference—against the stone floor, wearing light summer clothing and with his skin slightly damp from rapidly-cooling sweat, he was rapidly getting uncomfortably cold.

…Which gave him an idea. It was probably a bad idea, but Duo never let that stop him.

"Hey, Heero?"

"Mmm…"

Damn, he was really out of it. That just wasn't normal—the heat really messed with him that badly? But it wasn't hot in here… Maybe he was just tired, or something.

"I'm going to, um… I'm going to sit on you now, because it's kind of cold here on the floor."

There was no obvious reaction to his statement, so Duo figured it was safe, and did so.

There. That was _much_ nicer. With the cool air of the room and Heero's heat—he was always remarkably warm—he was remarkably comfortable.

Hesitantly, he laid down. Heero's heart was beating underneath him. Duo closed his eyes and just enjoyed—touch. He'd…

When he'd been Ellyaugh's captive, he'd been—isolated. The most interaction he'd gotten had been from the few fellow slaves also kept near him, and the guards, who hadn't been _nice_ people.

"What are you doing?"

The unexpectedness of the voice, _Heero's_ voice, vibrating up through his bones, as deep as night, surrounding him, made him jump.

"Gah! Oh—uh, hey there, Heero. You see, it's funny, I thought you were asleep—"

"Duo. Why are you laying on me?"

"—because the floor was cold?"

Heero didn't respond, just waiting.

"…Um."

Although Heero's patience was being sorely tested. He was done waiting, and started talking: he wanted an explanation. "That is not a good answer."

"It looked comfortable." There was no way in hell, absolutely _no_ fucking way, that Duo was going to actually say that he wanted to be touched, to be held, out loud. Absolutely_ not_.

Now, if only Heero would accept a not-mortifyingly-embarrassing explanation…

His neck was cricked to look into Duo's face, and he finally lay back down, shrugging. "Acceptable." Duo didn't know, but he guessed that he'd seen something that had convinced him to back down—at the beginning, he knew, that first dinner, his host hadn't been able to read him. He probably didn't get everything now, but he was a lot better—and it was working the other way around, too, so Duo wasn't too peeved about the matter. It certainly could have been worse.

Duo finally lay back down too, trying to not feel too stupid as he did so.

Because he was _laying_ on him. Which was kind of weird, really.

But it still felt nice.

oOo

"Damn. You beat me again."

Heero just looked at Duo steadily, the ball they were playing with tiny in one of his huge hands.

"…_Fine._ Point made, you're always gonna win, whatever. Now, let's do something _else._"

oOo

"The weather here is driving me _crazy!_" Duo announced. His arms were wrapped around his shoulders and he was shaking slightly, even tucked up against the warm bulk of Heero the way he was. The two of them had been out in the garden—just talking; but Duo did better with something physical to do, even if it wasn't anything big—and a sudden squall had blown in, surprising after the sunny and warm—almost hot—start to the day. It had started raining, a few drops turning into a full downpour within seconds, the rain falling hard enough that Duo's skin almost hurt and the drumming of the water was deafening and so heavy that it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of you through the sheets of water. The two of them had run for a small shelter placed in among the plants, arriving soaking wet—Duo more so than Heero. Fur seemed to shed water better.

And Heero was holding the heat better. As the resounding din doubled in intensity as hail started to fall in with the rain Duo pressed himself even further back, unable to move anywhere but closer to Heero in the tiny protected space they had, and not sure he was unhappy he was being forced to.

But there wasn't any real need to think about that. Was there?

Heero muttered something.

"What?" Duo asked, forced to raise his voice to be heard over the resounding clatter of hailstones on the slate roof of the little building they were in.

Heero repeated what he'd said, but it wasn't enough for him to make out actual words—he had the _impression_ of speech, nothing more.

"_What?"_ he repeated, and this time Heero just shrugged, looking mildly peeved. Duo assumed it wasn't at him—and if it was, it shouldn't be—and leaned further back. He'd felt the movement as much as seen it. The ripple of fur and muscle had been—_odd,_ but not... Not too weird. He was adjusting. It wasn't hard to; in fact, it was pretty damn easy. Heero was great, certainly the best friend Duo had ever had—well, maybe that was Quatre, although he certainly had a _different_ relationship with the blond boy—and it was easy to just think of him as _Heero_. Not the monster, not even as human, just as—what he was. Which was Heero. It suited him.

It was nice, watching the rain pour down all around them. It was the first real rain Duo had seen in—in years, honestly. Not during his capture, and this was the first time it had really stormed at the castle, at least during the day. It was _nice._ He'd forgotten how peaceful rain could be, and how nice it was to look out at it. And he'd never seen it out in the country, before. He'd been a city brat.

The only downside was that he really was kind of cold. Kind of _really_ cold. His teeth had started chattering.

Which was probably the reason Heero had started to sneak one arm around him, better than a fur coat because _they_ didn't come with built-in heaters. Because Heero—even if he didn't see Duo as a potential _partner—_cared about him. Other than Wufei—and that was _different_; just like Duo and Quatre didn't have the relationship Duo and Heero did—he was the Lord of the Castle's best friend. And this way, he could help Duo without Duo needing to protest, and he could do his duty as Duo's host and he could help pay back some of the debt he seemed to think he was owed, even though he _wasn't_.

And Duo could pretend he didn't notice, and imagine that Heero had done it out of something more than friendship. And he could just enjoy the touch, the arm heavy around him and most of him pressed against muscle and fur and the heavy cloth that served as Heero's rudimentary clothing, and the scent of him, inhuman but... Not in a bad way. It wasn't like he smelled like wet dog, or anything. He just smelled like _Heero_.

Duo sat there, and watched the rain, and pretended it meant something, that they were standing like that.

oOo

They'd made it in, but they'd both gotten pretty wet in the process. There were damp spots on the rug, and a pile of wet clothes a little ways away. Duo had pulled on something comfortable and dry, and wrapped himself in a blanket. Heero was seated a little ways away, steaming slightly. There was a roaring fire, and the faint sound of rain on the roof of the building—they were on the top floor, then, Duo guessed. But it was hard to tell. He wasn't sure that the castle had a solid connection to reality. Not least because of the invisible servants—the shades that served them.

He'd looked away for a second, and when he'd turned back there had been a tray filled with a tea pot, fruit, a little pastry and a few small tea-sandwiches. Duo _had_ missed lunch.

Life was... For the first time, his life was probably pretty close to perfect. If he didn't think too hard about... Things.

But that was the past. And this was now. He poured himself a cup of tea and held it in his hands, breathing the steam in deep, and let the warmth soak through him.

There was a single calendula on the tray, next to the plates of food. He picked it up with a slight smile, twirling the stem between his fingers. "Pot-marigold. For the kitchen, and cooking." He gave a slightly lop-sided smile, in the direction of Heero. "I think you can eat them."

"_I_ can't," rumbled Heero quietly, and Duo chuckled slightly. "When did you learn that?"

"Good question. Well—

"Let's see. My mom... She was a ladies' maid. Or she had been, but she lost favor for some reason or another. For all I know she was caught fucking someone's husband, and I'm not only a bastard, I'm a _noble_ bastard. But I don't think so. Odds are she just wasn't all that good at her job."

Duo took a bite of sandwich, chewed thoughtfully and then swallowed. "Yeah. She picked up a few things, though. And she learned how to read flowers. She was _good_ at it. And before she died—I was real little, then—she taught me how to read them, too. She had to draw the flowers in charcoal on the floor. She'd do it before she washed up."

"You remember that early?" Heero asked, sounding slightly surprised.

"Yeah. I got a good memory. But it's my turn, now. What was _your_ mom like?"

Heero stilled suddenly, pulling away both physically and emotionally, leaving Duo confused.

"Heero?"

"My mother died after giving birth to me."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"...It's nothing."

There was a long pause.

Heero stirred, after a long silence, then spoke, slowly and quietly, the words falling out of him like stones hitting the surface of a still pond. "I was raised by a maid until I was six, when I was taken aside to be raised as befits a Lord."

Duo hissed in a breath. "That sucks," he said, reaching out to lay a hand on Heero's arm. He tried not to think too hard about the gesture, but simply to do it. He'd wanted to; that was good enough for him.

He was still hyper-aware of his fingers against the rough, still-damp fur that covered Heero, but he tried to ignore that, too.

Heero shrugged, the gesture an acceptance and a dismissal, and the movement wasn't meant to push Duo away from him. "The woman who raised me... She was a good woman."

There was a pause.

Duo wanted to ask a question—_Was she the one who tried to kill you?—_but didn't. He didn't know his boundaries, didn't know what would be pushing too hard, what would offend, or hurt. So he stayed quiet—not something he usually did, but something that needed doing.

"She had... Trouble with my change."

That answered his question. Moving with all the impetuous speed of an ex-pickpocket, Duo whirled to wrap his arms around him, clinging hard. Heero made a startled noise.

"I'm sorry," Duo whispered into his chest.

"You don't need to be," Heero said and, slowly, cautiously, wrapped his arms around Duo in return.

--End chapter 11--


	12. Chapter 12

**Lovely****  
Chapter Twelve**

By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gundam Wing. I'm just playing in the proverbial sandbox.

**Author's Notes**: Sorry it's taken so long! That said, this is a longer chapter (to help make up for that) and also a very important one, plot-wise. You could even say that this is the beginning of the end. ;)

As always, huge thanks to my beta, **Lady-Frisselle**! And another thank-you to all my wonderful readers and reviewers.

oOoOoOo

Duo was jogging through the palace gardens, an almost meditative act—the movement, the vague impression of flowers, the cool morning air damp against his skin. His passage disturbed the light fog that was layered over the ground.

When he paused to fumble with his flask of water, Duo realized, without much worry, that he didn't know where he was. That happened—more so in the castle than in the grounds surrounding it—and he'd adjusted to the little _quirks_ of life in the enchanted place. Once he started actively trying to get back, the grounds would rearrange themselves again—the far edges would go blurry, and he'd get a headache if he stared at them too long—and then he'd find his way back to the cutting garden or the knot-work gardens or some other place he recognized, and then he could make his way back to the castle, easily—and the castle itself would doubtless become visible again in a little while, and then he could steer himself using _it_.

So no, he wasn't worried. Just curious. And Duo was a force of nature when it came to satisfying his curiosity. He was worse than a sorcerer's cat, he'd been told—and Duo had chosen to take that particular comparison as a compliment. It wasn't like he hadn't had worse ones.

Duo started walking again, stretching out his muscles—he didn't want them to seize up. As he walked, overgrown branches lined with thorns reached out to pull at his skin and clothes. It was strikingly different from the austere, clipped and, most importantly, controlled beauty of the other gardens—and the design wasn't any more informal than any other part of the garden. There were dark yew hedges on either side of the path, very tall ones—they had to be ancient—and he could almost see, _almost_, the remains of the patterns that had once been carefully planted in. Doubtless the fragile plants, the ones that had needed babying, were dead by now—and the annuals, the bulbs that needed replanting each spring (although there were crocus shoots starting to poke through the ground, which made no sense, because all the bushes and the leafy plants all had their foliage, so why were they only starting to emerge now?) had been replaced by hardier plants, volunteers and weeds.

That thorny vine was going through everything. —No. It wasn't a weed. It was roses. White roses. He could see the first buds, just starting to crack open, ahead of him. And then full blossoms, further on. Even though it was too cold out for roses. Even though the crocus hadn't even started to bloom yet. Duo shivered.

He remembered this garden. He glanced around nervously, but didn't see any verain, this time. Verain, or verbena, Quatre called it—for sorcery. And for madness. It gave you power, but it took more than it gave, always. It left anyone gifted powerless and crazy, and if you knew how to handle it—the story went—even the ungifted could find power. Then it drove them crazier.

The ground was drifted with petals, and his footsteps left bruises against the white. Despite that, he couldn't see any dying roses. There were buds, and roses fully blown, and roses at every stage in-between, but no roses past their prime—no roses to leave dropped petals at all. And the gardens were still untended, so nobody could have cut the dying roses away...

White roses, every single one of them. Not for love, but for _forever_. Red roses, pink, yellow, orange, cream, peach, mauve, fuchsia, and all the mixed colors, even green roses—they were for love. Different types of love, and they could have different nuances, but still—_love_.

Except for white roses. Even if people didn't always know that. People assumed it meant eternal love, but they were wrong...a white rose just meant eternity.

Duo was kind of unsettled.

There was a courtyard up ahead, still flanked with those yews. Still filled with white roses. Duo hurried up a little, because he was unsettled, yeah, but he wasn't going to let _that_ stop him, oh no. And he was still _curious_.

Aaand _here_ was the verain, all in and around the roses. Its sweet scent, like lemon if it was razor-sharp, an edge that was aromatic, indescribable, filled the air.

There was no fountain in the center of courtyard, not even a statue set into the palm. Not even water lilies. It was just a smooth pond, unexceptional—

—except that it was frozen solid.

Duo moved forward, staring at the pond in fascination. The ice was smooth, flawless and hard. It didn't reflect the branches of the trees above the garden—there were four big dogwoods, one in each corner of the garden—or anything else, not even the sun in the sky up above, or the clouds, but it did show Duo's reflection. He looked down, fascinated—what was causing that?

A sudden voice, deep and surprised, made him startle. "Duo?"

"Heero!"

"What...what are you doing here?"

Duo wasn't expecting the honest surprise in Heero's voice. It made him sound younger.

"I was going for a run and I just—found this place? Where _are_ we?"

There was a pause. "This is part of the curse," Heero said slowly. "This is the—the Mirror, that's what the servants named it. It's always frozen. And if you...if you think hard enough, it shows you what you want to see. I've...seen my _companions_ of the curse, after they've left. A lot. One girl tried to find me and cried when she didn't. One man tried to kill himself when nobody believed him, and then was institutionalized. A woman very early on tried to lead a mob back to find me."

Duo stepped forward without even thinking, to lay a hand against Heero's forearm, wanting to comfort him. It took him a minute to remember that the contact might not be appreciated, but by then—by then, Heero was drawing a little closer to Duo, and then—somehow—they ended up hugging, and Duo cursed the people who'd come before him, silently and then cursed the witch who'd left the curse for being so cruel as to give him this, out loud but not offering an explanation for the obscenities.

The hug ended awkwardly, both Duo and Heero unsure what to do with themselves and each other. Duo wanted, somewhat fiercely, to try and kiss the other man. But he _didn't_. It would be...

Something. But hell. He could think about things later. Right now, he wanted to satisfy his curiosity when it came to the pond. Mirror. Magicked thingy.

"So—it shows what's happening out in the real world?"

"If you think about it hard enough. It should work for you, too. I think. I—I believe it worked for the servants, while they were alive. It works for Wufei. He used it for a while, at the very beginning. Looking at his clan. ...It's better not to."

"I don't have anyone to look _at,_" Duo said honestly. "I don't care enough about that bastard Ellyaugh, for example. And everyone else..." Everyone else had died in the plague. Maius, July, Emily, Sarali, Tob, Derry, Jam, Jerry short for Jerrisan, Jilli, Artun. His _family._ And his mother had died long before that. Duo shivered, trying to shake off the names that still haunted him.

And he was staring blankly at the pond. Magic thing. The Mirror. His eyes focused, and he stared, uncomprehending, at the image on the frozen surface for a long, almost endless moment.

"Who is that, then?" asked Heero, sounding both cautious and questioning.

"I don't know—no." Duo's breath caught in his chest. "No, no, no—no—that's Alis. All grown up, but it's—it has to be her. I remember that scar. And it's—but she _died_. Gods above, she died, I was there with her—it was when we were all dying, except me, when things were worst—she should be dead. She must have—how did she live? Oh God. I don't—I didn't—"

"Who is she? Alis?"

"She was—my sister. Not by blood, but we were all—us street rats. Families had better chances than you did alone, and we were all close. That's Alis. She was rude and violent, but she liked—she was close to Emily. They'd been a team, picking pockets, long before they'd joined up with us. She like me, too. All of us. We were a _family_ after all."

"...You didn't know she was alive?"

"I...I thought they all died, during the Plague. I...I could have sworn..." Duo took a step back, away from the pond. Alis was making cheese, pushing a hanging churn each time she passed the small room, laughing over her shoulder—silently, they couldn't hear anything—at someone outside the tiny dairy.

Heero was there behind him, a hand against his back to support him. Duo leaned against him gratefully.

"I didn't know," he said, again, stricken. Years-old guilt came flooding back.

oOo

Duo was very quiet at dinner that night, although he attempted to hide it. Heero was quieter.

After a while they both gave up. When Duo stood to go, Heero asked his question.

"Duo. Will you marry me?"

"No, Heero."

"...You should go."

Duo turned around to look at the lord, but he was turned away from Duo already, facing the wall. His posture was set, firm, and hurting. He wasn't talking about leaving from dinner.

"But the curse...?"

"_You should go_. You're not going to break it. Nobody will. The sorceress who cursed me _knew_ that, damn her—it's nothing. I'm not asking it of you. You should go. I might...I can find where the girl lives. Your sister. Alis? It's...you should go. I won't hold you."

Duo wrapped him up in a silent hug from behind. Heero stiffened momentarily, then relaxed a little. He did not move to return the gesture.

"I'll find Quatre and Trowa," Heero said quietly, after one long minute, two. "They won't be able to leave without you. This is their last chance."

"Thank you," Duo whispered, holding Heero a little tighter for a brief moment, then releasing him. "_Thank you_."

"You owe me nothing," Heero said, numbly.

oOo

They left the next morning. Duo had barely slept. He looked torn as he stood by his horse, the beast looking grumpy at finally being used.

Quatre was hiding worry, barely. Trowa was as inscrutable as always. Wufei was just as blank-faced, but considerably more haughty. Haughty-_looking_, at least; Duo thought he was hiding sorrow, too, and a good measure of concern.

Heero looked—something. It was hard to tell, with his face. He sounded pained. _It had to be hard for him,_ Duo thought, and he felt a slight pang of guilt.

He didn't know what else to do, though. He needed to go. Alis...he'd never imagined that _anyone_ would still be alive. And it looked like she'd done well for herself...

And at least Quatre and Trowa would be let free, too. Duo knew that the blond-haired boy had been fretting about his family. Not only because he missed them, and knew that they missed him, but because of power dynamics within the Winner family. He was the only heir, after all. That made him important. And he'd heard rumors about all those daughters...namely, which ones of them had suitable sons.

So they'd be set free. They weren't supposed to have been involved in the whole thing at all. So that was good. He wouldn't be leaving any loose ends behind him. He'd—he'd leave things the way they were, at least.

He was going to miss Heero.

The good-byes were curt and largely unemotional, with Quatre's farewells being the exception.

And then the three of them took their leave.

Duo's heart hurt, so he didn't look back.

oOo

Heero was numb. And cold. He curled up a little tighter, and tried to wish the world away. Tried not to think. Tried to accept the obvious—the curse wasn't going to be ended. He was not going to go free. It would unravel, eventually, from one end or the other—maybe he would die first, maybe people would stop showing up first—and then that would be it, no matter which one, he'd die. He was ready.

And Duo. If Duo wasn't the one to break the curse, then—then no one was. Heero had _known_ that, though. Known that no one was going to break the spell. Even though Duo had been there longer than any of the others, even though they'd been—been close, even if they'd just been friends, he wasn't the one meant to complete the spell. Or he was, but Heero wasn't going to force him to stay. Or even—

Duo wouldn't have thought to have gone, if Heero hadn't said anything. And five hundred years ago, or four hundred, or one hundred—Heero wouldn't have said a word. It wasn't doing anything _wrong,_ technically, to not say that Duo could leave, especially since there were such specific conditions that needed to be met for it to happen. And it would benefit him, to have the curse lifted, which would even make Duo happy.

...But it would be wrong.

That was the crux of things. Even if Duo didn't know, it would—it would be hurting him. Heero _respected_ him. And he deserved to know. He deserved to find his, his _family_. They so clearly meant so much to him, or had. The plague...

Heero wondered how it had happened, then thought of Duo again. Of what he would do, now that he was free again, both from Ellyaugh's slave pens and from Heero's castle and its gilded rooms. He'd find _something_. He had a determination to survive—and he was smart, strong, willing to work. Fiercely intelligent, in unexpected ways—he wasn't educated, but he could think.

The thought of him made Heero curl up closer around himself. His limbs felt like blocks of ice. There was frost, crackling in his fur, and his breath misted in the air. Everything was so cold.

oOo

Heero had given him instructions on where, approximately, Alis was, so Duo found her without much trouble. He'd always had a knack for hunting things down—not that he'd had the chance to practice, recently. Especially since Heero seemed immune. Which was just like him—damned good at disappearing, despite his size and what he looked like. You wouldn't think that hundreds of pounds of muscle and fur wearing nothing but breeches would disappear in a castle filled with crystal, embroidery, fine paintings, precious woods and marble, but he did. It never failed to amuse Duo, actually, and sometimes he could even coax a laugh out of Heero about it—

And Heero had a lovely laugh. It's memory made something painful pull tight in Duo, but he ignored it. And kept on walking. He'd ditched the horse first thing, once he'd reached the city—there was no better way to attract attention than to look like you had money, especially when you had no reason to. He'd sold off his clothes, too—even the plainest things he'd been able to wrangle out of his damned closet were clearly well made and expensive, and several centuries out of fashion, to boot.

It was a good part of town he was in. He was impressed—not a wealthy district, but a safe one, where there were lots of good, plain folk—merchants who'd been moderately successful, people who'd had a business they'd built up from the ground do well. Nobody with real money, which would just attract more trouble anyway, but people with enough to get by comfortably and then some.

Quite a step up from begging in the street, and pick-pocketing.

Duo froze when he saw her. Alis. It was definitely her—she still moved the same, and it was—it was just like in the Mirror. She was all grown up but still the same girl—he could see her, like the ghost of the Alis he'd known had been transposed over the face of a stranger. Eerily familiar but not right at all, _almost._

He knew she'd seen him, too, when she dropped the plate of cheeses she'd been carrying, shock written large on her face, and threw herself at him.

Duo caught her and hugged her close as tears prickled in his eyes, and he hid them in the fabric of her dress, listening at her babble—he was babbling himself.

They'd drawn an audience, but Alis snapped at them, voice loud and not seriously angry, and they dispersed, subtly.

"We should go somewhere quiet," he said.

"I know a good alley," she said, bright and unashamed even dressed nice in proper clothes, with a milkmaid's sign stamped proudly on her sleeves and hat and a dairymaid's sign on her starched white apron.

Duo laughed. Some things didn't change, and he was happy for them. Alis smiled back at him, wicked.

She did know a good alley, a fair ways away from her home district—which made sense. There were crates to sit on, and nobody to eavesdrop. They settled in, made themselves comfortable—laughed a little bit more about the expression an urchin had pulled when Alis had pinched his hand when he tried to go for her purse.

And then it went silent.

"What happened?" Duo asked at last, meaning everything.

"I...I don't remember well," Alis said, looking away. "Things were bad, you remember? I remember! A little. Most of it. You—you got scary, at the last. Lilting to the sides, y'know? I understand, don't worry, Duo—what with so many dyin' and all the littlest and everythin'. You weren't right, and that's to be expected. It's just natural, right, and it happens—I weren't much better neither, you know."

"I remember," Duo sighed, twisting a thick loop of braid around one hand. He didn't _remember_ going sideways at all—not like she was saying...

"So I cut when I got a chance. It were a lady—you know, high-up and proper'n all."

"I'm guess she don't know you talk so, now-a-days?" Duo said to her, street accent mockingly thick and one brow arched expressively. Alis stuck her tongue out, not at all like the young lady she'd become, then continued, clearly ignoring him. Duo understood: it was nice to talk the way you'd grown up, even when it had long since faded from how you spoke every day.

"And the lady, I knew it were my chance—I wanted to go for you others, but there weren't time—she was there for some urchin, yeah, and didn't care much which, just so's long as she got one to show round—and I was a pretty thing, so I knew I got a chance. And the bruising was just beginning, and I knew...we all knew...

"But I'd heard that the ones what had money had found a cure, if you paid for it, so I went for it—and she done picked me, right? I got healing and I did my tricks for a while, you know, curtsied for her ladyfriends and was sweet and ate all dainty, and then I went off, and I dunno what happened to her. But I got better, and after, I went to look, but our place were all cleart out—the Rough Street group got it. I didn't care enough to fight it, so I left. I got work, I do cheese and butter, and then sell it—the lads like a pretty face, and I like it, yeah." She smiled, wry. "Aren't all good, but there's nights in the streets to fix what civilizing I had, and I find I like my dinners regular-like."

"Me too," Duo said, matching her smile and her accent. "I know, us rats—we need us some trouble now'n'again, mm?"

"And what 'bout you?"

"Me? Ohh, I got taken in for slaving. It's the eyes, right? It was a bastard to get done, but I slipped in the end."

"You were always good at it. Slip'riest of us all."

"...I would've sworn you died. Sworn on my mother, but she dead too."

"You sure your mother's dead and done? I never went, neither. Just disappeared. You guessed, right?

"No, no guessing—I _remember_, Alis, remember taking you to burn in the piles—"

"Wasn't me, obviously so. Right, Duo, you _have_ gone sideways—crazy!"

"No more than you, bitingest Alis of us all—they don't call you that now, I'd guess."

"You'd be surprised what the boys say 'bout me." Alis smiled slyly, and Duo laughed out loud.

"You're a threat, Miss Alissindrine," he said. "I'd pick fighting monsters over you!" That made his heart turn over painfully—he hadn't thought of Heero until after the words had been said. And then it was too late.

"I thought you died," Duo repeated again, a few silent moments later. "You and all the others. Maius, July, Sarali, Artun, Jerry—"

"Not all," Alis said, brow crinkled with worry. "Jerry didn't die of Plague. He went down when the Rooks went after our dinner and he didn't know it was time to quit."

"Oh," Duo said carefully.

"...You might not remember clear," offered Alis. "After all, you were coming down sick then too."

"What?" Duo said, clearly shocked—he whipped around to face Alis, intense.

"Towards the end. You come down with the bruises, I seen it start, 'fore I left—on your hands. All purple-like, and yellowy-green. _You_ know. I seen it."

Duo was silent.

"What? Don't remember?"

"...I don't."

oOo

Duo knew he'd never gotten the Plague. He knew. But...his hands...what he'd heard...

oOo

Alis had found a good life. Duo had found an out-of-the-way corner and scraped himself up a bed. He'd worry about getting more money, finding a way to live, later on—there were always opportunities, he told himself. He didn't need to worry about starving, about falling to the worst side of the streets. Alis had managed to pull herself out, after all. And _during_ the Plague.

...He missed Heero. Missed him _fiercely_. He missed Quatre, and would miss him more later on, when his absence made itself known, but mostly—right now he missed Heero. He missed Wufei and Trowa, but it wasn't—like that.

Duo bit his lip, hard. Heero had no interest in him like _that_. He was asking out of duty. They were friends, and that was good. And he didn't—he wasn't—

He wasn't going to think about this. Instead, he was going to eat some of the food he had brought with himself, from the castle. Heero had been—worried about him doing well. Duo had had to be pretty insistent about what he was and wasn't willing to take, and about what simply wasn't reasonable at all. Wufei had then gone on to glower at him and mutter obscenities while he packed Duo, Quatre and Trowa all big lunches, and then an extra packet of food for Duo, which he had presented to him with a death glare that just _dared_ him to say anything.

Duo being Duo, he had promptly made a laughing comment—something about mother ducks and manly honor—and then taken off, because he was stupid enough to say that sort of thing, but not stupid enough to let Wufei catch him after he had.

...Duo missed Wufei too. And Heero. It...hurt.

But he'd found Alis. One of his _family_, the family that meant most. The family that he'd thought was dead.

...He'd been wrong. _But he remembered Alis dying_. And she—he hadn't had the plague, ever. Not even the beginning symptoms. He'd been one of the very few luckiest ones—by the time it had burned itself out, the Plague had sickened almost everyone, very literally. He was the luckiest because he hadn't gotten sick at all—the simply lucky had gotten it early on and recovered; there had been a resurgence, later on. For two weeks, a month, it had almost looked like the plague was over, back when it was simply catastrophic; then it had come back, even deadlier, and everyone who hadn't gotten it before had gotten it then.

Except for the very few. Including Duo.

But that wasn't what Alis remembered...

She remembered him with the plague. She remembered him with _bruises_ on his hand. And she remembered—she said Jerry hadn't died of plague. Little Jerrisan, who had a name bigger than he was. But it _couldn't _have been a fight with a rival group of street urchins, because Duo remembered taking him to be burned, like he had most of the other kids. He remembered taking Alis, too.

Alis, who was still alive. Not dead of plague at all, and not burned up to ashes to keep the disease from spreading. But Duo remembered it, _perfectly_, like he did almost all of his life—even when he'd been far too young, he remembered. He couldn't have been more than two, three, when his mother had started teaching him the flowers—and she'd been dead not too many years after that. He could _see_ it happening in his hands, could remember the feel of the cold, bruised and veined flesh of Jerry, Alis, all of the others, against his hands—the unique, sick feel of the swollen lines of blood and pus, mixed, that sometimes burst when you pulled too hard on a dead child's limbs, trying to move the corpse a little further away from where you and all the others slept—he _remembered_, he was never, never going to be able to forget.

The smell had been worst part. Even worse than the feel, because you could try to forget that, but the smell was _everywhere_, it wasn't just your memory—the streets smelled of it, the alleys were worse, and it was so strong in most of the houses that it had made Duo retch. And it mixed with the smell that came off of the burning corpses, which also made a constant rain of ash fall down on the city, like snow reversed.

...But enough about that. Living in the past didn't do anyone any good.

Duo turned back to the remains of his lunch, and busied himself pulling out some bread, cured meat, a piece of fruit—he was careful that there was no one to observe him while he was at it. He wanted the chance to eat his dinner unmolested, after all.

He pricked his finger on something sharp as he rooted through the bag, and he yelped, sticking the bleeding digit into his mouth to suck on it—whatever it was had drawn _blood_, damn it. And he didn't think Wufei was stupid enough to stick an unsecured knife into a bag.

More gingerly, this time, Duo put his hand back into the bag, and pulled out a rose.

He looked at it, perplexed. Wufei was far more human than he gave the impression of being—in a totally different way from Heero, of course; Wufei was just an asshole—but Duo really _really_ didn't think that he was the sort to send roses in a guy's lunch. The brunet eyed the rose more closely, holding it gently by the stem, careful to avoid the wickedly hooked thorns—one was stained almost black with his blood, but they were all tipped with red, just a quirk of the plant's coloring. It was odd, though—the rose itself was very pale. Was it—white? In fact, it looked like the white roses that grew around the frozen Mirror...

_White roses. For _forever.

Duo paused. Forever...it was a very long time. He flipped the rose in his fingers, then paused as it sparkled, unexpectedly, with the faint glitter of magic. And again.

...Not much magic, though. The faint glimmer of ice-white flecks was very faint indeed. Just enough to cast a faint illusion, or too—

Struck with a thought, Duo realized that the rose had been in his bag all day, and no doubt greatly abused in the process. But the rose was still perfect. Curious, he tried to tug out a petal, and found it impossible; he tried to crease it, bruise it, snap the stem, but it stayed the way it had been—perfect, pristine, a full-blown rose that could have been made of porcelain except that it was alive, and it was preserved, spelled to persist and to last. Duo had run across the magic before, but never seen it applied to something so, so trivial—

With a shrug, he put the matter aside and stuffed the rose back inside the bag. There was no reason to get rid of it—and some part of his heart resisted, with an almost frightening insistence, throwing away any of his last, tenuous links to Heero. And to his time away from the world, locked up in a spelled castle.

There was still a chance he'd run into Trowa again, which helped, minutely. There was a chance that they moved in the same circles, or at least circles that were, potentially, at the same (low) altitude. Although he was definitely friends with Quatre, which might mean that he'd moved up in the world. Considerably.

...He'd been offered help by the Winner heir, too, and he'd turned him down point-blank; Quatre had had the grace to not be too offended. So there was that. Duo had no idea what Trowa had decided...and he could be something of an enigma.

_He really _really_ missed Heero_.

Duo purposefully turned his mind away from—him.

What was he going to do? It wasn't like he had tons of (legal) marketable skills. He was in good physical shape—there was always manual labor, assuming that he could find something that would keep him interested. Or interested enough, at least—he tended to get edgy when he got bored, something years in a slave pen hadn't managed to cure him of. And employers tended not to like his version of _'edgy._' Because Duo was, and always had been, very good at finding something to amuse himself with.

...And his eyes were a liability. He looked like he could work magic: purple eyes? He _had_ to have the gift, the knack. And he had, once—but he'd burned himself out in the plague. Not a scrap of magic in him, anymore—but nobody else knew that. And magic drew trouble. _Everybody_ knew that. Especially after the plague—and Duo understood.

He wouldn't want to fire someone who had the gift, for example. And there was no good reason why anyone—_anyone—_gifted would be forced into working with their hands for a living, unless they were looking for trouble, or something was wrong.

And there were too many people fighting for too few jobs.

Duo could always go back to pickpocketing, although he didn't want to. Maybe Quatre would have a job for him—but that was still a little too much like taking handouts, and he had far too much pride for that, not that he thought that Quatre wouldn't give him a real job. He could probably get work if he talked to Alis, who would have connections around the neighborhood, at least, although that was likely to be boring work, too.

_Beggars can't be choosers_, his mother told him, the memory nothing but her voice, now. And the smell of her: lavender, and something clean—

—_or sharp, like ice, oncoming winter—_

It was funny how memory worked, how he could remember that voice, that smell, so clearly—one minute, caught perfectly—but have no image to match it. He had _other_ memories of his mother's face, her body, but that one was just—gone.

Maybe the scavenging market had improved since he'd been imprisoned. That was a chance, maybe even a good one—although there was no real reason to think so, since things were being rebuilt again.

—No, Quatre wasn't going to be able to offer him a job. He was—nobody knew he was gifted, because he could hide it but also because it was considered _wrong_ to the Maaens. He couldn't hire anyone who was his opposite, looking gifted but not. Which was Duo.

Duo didn't belong in this world anymore. He'd been imprisoned too long, he was too alone, too lost—the rest of the world had rebuilt, while he'd been rotting in a slaver's cell. And then he'd been in Heero's world, where everything was—different.

He had no way to get a job, no way to move on, nothing to build with or on.

And something felt _wrong_. Maybe it was just the aftereffects of his unsettling conversation with Alis, but—no. That wasn't it. Something was off. _Wrong_, unutterably, implacably so.

He didn't know what, but he was worried. And he couldn't keep Heero out of his head. Duo fumbled the rose out of his pack again, being careful with his fingers this time, so that he only barely pricked one of them.

It looked older, more blowzy and open than it had this morning, when it had looked fully blown already.

But it had been spelled. That was crazy, to think it had changed. It was just the light, no doubt.

_Something was wrong_. Duo stared at his hands, the shadow of the rose cast across them, and could almost see the dark as discoloration, a bruise, stippling his palm, his knuckles, heavy and deadly.

--End chapter 12--


End file.
